Thrive (Guardian Protection) Read online

  Guilt corroded my insides. “Mira, baby, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  She rolled her shoulders back and lifted her chin high. “I don’t give a fuck how you meant it. You don’t know me as well as you think.” She walked over to Kurt and kneeled beside him. “Goodbye, Jeremy.”

  “Mira,” I whispered, my chest constricting until I could barely breathe.

  “Leave!” she screamed. Cradling Kurt’s head, she settled on the ground until it was in her lap. “Make your own life. Do something great with it. But stay out of ours.”

  “Mir—”

  “Go!” she roared, her voice echoing off the surrounding buildings.

  My stomach knotted, and I stood there, blinking at her. My heart screamed for me to drag her into my arms and force her to come with me and live the rest of her natural life by my side—where she belonged.

  But it was my mind that told me she was right to choose him. I had nothing to offer her. Kurt had made sure of that.

  But, damn it, nobody in the world could love her like I would.

  It just wasn’t enough.

  “Mira,” I pleaded one last time.

  She looked up at me, but she didn’t utter a word.

  Her silence was the loudest answer of all.

  Numb, and not because of the alcohol, I walked back to my truck. My head pounded and my gut churned, but it was the hollow ache in my chest that I knew was going to be permanent that hurt the most.

  Seventeen years later…

  “Does the rent cover any utilities?” I asked, walking around the small apartment. Given the shit-tastic exterior, I wasn’t expecting much from the inside. But it was surprisingly clean and in our price range, and it didn’t have a naked man passed out in the breezeway like the last complex we’d looked at.

  Doug, the middle-aged man with a comb-over that would make the Trump family proud, leaned his elbow on the bar dividing the small living room from the smaller kitchen. “Are you planning to illegally splice cable off Terry in 3D?”

  I twisted my lips. “Absolutely not.”

  He righted himself, shoved his hands into his pockets, and strolled in my direction. “Then no. It doesn’t include any utilities.”

  I shifted my pink Gucci bag to my other arm. It was one of the few possessions I’d managed to sneak out before the Feds had seized everything three years earlier. Before then, I’d had a house with a walk-in closet three times the size of that apartment full of designer labels. Now, the only labels in my clothes were from places that doubled as grocery stores. But I couldn’t complain. I was happier than I had been in years. Hell, maybe ever.

  Okay, not necessarily ever. There had been a few years there before everything had fallen apart.

  “We’ll take it!” Whitney shouted as she walked inside.

  I spun to face her. “But we haven’t looked at the bedrooms yet.”

  She leaned around me and asked Doug, “Are there four walls, a door, a ceiling, and a floor in the bedrooms?”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “Last I checked.”

  She swung her gaze back to mine and smiled. “Then, like I said, we’ll take it.”

  There was no arguing with Whitney. And let’s be honest, it was the nicest thing we’d seen all week.

  Doug shifted his gaze to mine. “Should I draw up the lease?”

  “Uhh…” My chest tightened and my stomach wrenched.

  There was no reason to be scared. This move was a good thing. Whit and I had been saving every penny we’d had for over a year to get out of the one-step-above-a-crack-house we were currently sharing with two other women, both of whom were strippers. Not that there was anything wrong with stripping. It was honest work. But Sherri and Tammy should have hung up their thongs and pasties about twenty years and seven pounds of cocaine earlier. But I had to give it to ’em. They always paid their rent on time, and on more than one occasion, one of them had covered my portion until payday.

  But, even with as sweet as they were, Whit and I wanted more.

  A new apartment was just the first step in finding that. We were getting new jobs and new friends, and we had vowed to get new hairstyles—though I was starting to reconsider my promise to go blond. It was a new phase in our lives, filled with endless possibilities. Or so I told myself every morning when I’d wake up alone and in a panic.

  I’d never been good with change. If it had been up to me, I’d probably still have been in Alabama, regardless how much I’d wanted to escape. Fear was like that. It paralyzed me to the point that even my smallest hopes and dreams seemed out of reach. But, for three years, I’d been doing everything in my power to ignore the dark part of my brain that so often sabotaged me.

  It was time for a change. Up to that point, I had little to show for my life. I was a thirty-six-year-old divorcée with no kids, no education, no house, an old-as-sin Toyota Camry that had already been roughly old as sin when I’d bought it, a job as a bartender in a hole-in-the-wall bar in Chicago. Oh, and a Gucci purse I had smuggled out of my house one week after my husband had been arrested.

  Yeah…it was definitely time for a change.

  I flashed Whitney a tight smile. “Bitsy would love this place.”

  “Bitsy? I thought it was just the two of you?” Doug asked.

  “It’s her dog,” Whitney replied. Her long, raven hair brushed her back as she walked to the window to peer out at the slab of crumbling concrete they had advertised as a patio.

  “Oh, no way. Dogs are not allowed.”

  “What?” we exclaimed in unison.

  “Nope. No way. No how,” Doug replied. “No pets allowed. That includes dogs, cats, birds, hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, regular pigs, chickens, goats, or really farm animals of any kind—”

  Whitney’s eyebrows shot up. “Farm animals?”

  He shrugged. “You would be surprised by what people try to get away with. But make no mistake about it: This is a one hundred percent pet-free zone.”

  Whitney’s gaze slid to mine, worry carved in her delicate features. “Not even a teeny-tiny Chihuahua?”

  “Especially not a teeny-tiny Chihuahua. Nobody wants to hear one of those damn things yipping all hours of the night.”

  “But the ad said pets were negotiable with a deposit,” I interjected.

  He rolled his eyes and waved me off. “Pets are negotiable. Fish. You can have a fish.” He started past me to the front door, but then he suddenly stopped. “One fish. Don’t get crazy and act like you are building the Illinois aquarium. One fish. In a bowl. Nothing more.”

  “Come on. Please. I promise she’s a good dog.” I folded my hands in prayer, purposefully pressing my boobs together in a way no man could miss.

  His gaze didn’t even drop. God, I was getting old.

  “The only good dog in a rental property is no dog.” He hitched his thumb to the door. “Let’s go. No sense standing here, arguing about a dog. I’ve got another, pet-free couple interested anyway. You might have better luck across town at Harrington Village. I think they allow cats.”

  I drew in a deep breath and closed my eyes. I couldn’t do this to Whitney. Not because of Bitsy.

  Whitney Sloan was an amazing woman and an even better friend. We’d met two years earlier when we’d been working at a night club in downtown Chicago. She was a go-go dancer, and I was a bartender forced to prance around in a barely there skirt and tube top. It was exactly as glamorous as it sounded, and my stint there was short-lived. But Whitney was the one person I refused to leave behind. She was only twenty-one at the time, but in a lot of ways, I looked up to her. She was young, but she was passionate about doing something big with her life. And she didn’t take the cop-out like I had when I had been her age. She didn’t need to ride anyone else’s train out of town. She simply pulled up her big-girl panties and worked her ass off to put herself through college. She was currently in her last year, and she needed this apartment more than I did.

  The house we were currently sharing was loud, and w
ith four of us in the little over a thousand-square-foot space, someone was always coming or going. She worked long hours at the club and spent longer hours studying for classes. She needed a home where she could relax and focus on her schoolwork so she could graduate and succeed. And, in some weird way, I needed her to succeed to prove to myself that it was possible for people like us—even if it was too late for me.

  And, for this reason alone, I said, “We’ll take it.”

  Her eyes grew wide, and her face paled. “Mira, no. We can keep looking.”

  “You know we aren’t going to find anything better in our price range,” I replied.

  “But what about Bitsy?” she whispered.

  Bitsy was my entire life. All three pounds of her. She was a black-and-white Chihuahua that could fit curled up in both of my palms. I’d adopted her the day my divorce was finalized. Back then, I could barely afford to feed myself, much less pay for a dog, but when I’d seen her tiny little face on Craigslist, I had known I had to have her. I had been mourning the loss of a life I’d created for myself—I’d deserved a damn dog if I’d wanted one.

  I shot her a pained smile and choked out, “We’ll find her a good home.”

  Doug swung his head between us.

  Whitney gasped. “I can’t let you do that.”

  I walked over and took her hand in mine. “Honey, don’t worry about me. Okay? You need this place. We’ve been looking for a long time and this is the first place I’ve seen you excited about. Bitsy will be fine. We’ll talk to Sheila next door about keeping her. You know she loves that dog.”

  She stared at me for a beat and then threw her arms around my neck. “Oh, Mira. Thank you so much. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

  I smoothed her curly, black locks down and tucked her face into the curve of my neck, murmuring, “I know you will.”

  Doug leaned back inside the door. “So, is that a yes?”

  I released my best friend and nodded. “It’s a yes. We’ll take it.”

  He clapped his hands. “Perfect. I’ll go draw up the lease.” He threw his arms wide and waved them around the room. “Welcome home, ladies.”

  Home. I didn’t know what that word meant anymore. I’d realized over a decade earlier that home wasn’t a location, but rather a state of mind. I’d had a lot of houses. Big ones. Small ones. Expensive ones. Ones that should have been condemned. But never, not in any of them, had I found a sense of belonging. It was always just a place to rest my head. This would be no different.

  Once the door had clicked behind him, Whitney looked at me and smiled. “I can’t believe we actually found a place.”

  I nodded, sweeping my gaze through the small space while mentally arranging the limited amount of furniture we owned. “It’s actually pretty nice too. I think we’ll like it here.”

  She hooked her arm through mine. “No. It’s definitely not nice, Mira. It’s okay. And we will both live here temporarily. I don’t want you getting too comfortable and setting down roots in a place like this. You have bigger and better things on the horizon. I can feel it.”

  I laughed. “You’re sweet. But I’m thirty-six. The only thing on the horizon is mixing fiber into my morning oatmeal.”

  She sauntered to the kitchen and started inspecting all the drawers. “Fine, but you aren’t mixing your fiber into your oatmeal in this apartment. You’re going to do it in a nice house. With a nice man. And a nice life.”

  I’d had that once. Way back when. Okay, at least I’d had the nice house part. The rest was up for debate. But I’d made that life for myself. I’d chosen it. I had no right to wallow in self-pity for the way everything had turned out.

  “You want to start moving our stuff over this weekend?” I asked.

  Her eyes lit. “Hell yeah. I don’t care if we have to sleep on the floor and snuggle for warmth until we can borrow Glenn’s truck. I want out of that damn place.”

  “Glenn?” I drawled with mock horror. “What happened to sexy dimple guy?”

  She sighed. “Don’t get me started on Dimples. He didn’t even know my name before he declared I was his woman and shall forevermore bow down at his feet.”

  I gave her a side-eye. “Bow down at his feet?”

  She met my side-eye with her own. “Okay, he might not have said those exact words, but a man is in my life two weeks, demands I quit my job, and tries to make me move into the other side of his duplex? Trust me—bowing down at his feet was only one weekend away.”

  I laughed. “He was right, ya know?”

  Her mouth fell open. “And he never even met you but he somehow got my best girl on his side too? Oh, hell no. He had to go. I don’t care how pretty he is.”

  “Apparently, you do care how pretty he is, because every single time we talk about him, you end it with, ‘I don’t care how pretty he is.’”

  She glared, but it packed no heat. She knew I was right.

  Changing the subject, she propped her hip against the counter and grinned at me. “By the way, that was a nice touch about giving Bitsy away to Sheila. I almost believed you until I remembered we don’t know anyone named Sheila.”

  I laughed. “That man has lost his damn mind if he thinks I’m getting rid of Bit-Bit. I would get rid of you before I gave that dog away.”

  “Hey!” she laughed.

  “He won’t even know she’s here. We can sneak her inside in the Gucci. But, if he does find out, I’ll figure something out. I don’t want you to stress about it, okay?”

  She offered me a warm smile. “Okay. I promise.”

  “Come on. Let’s look at the bathrooms.”

  “Ohhh.” She threw her head back and moaned. “Say it again.”

  My grin stretched wide. “Bathroomsssssss.”

  “Oh my God. This is better than foreplay,” she breathed. “No more getting ready while you’re in the shower or peeing while you brush your teeth.”

  “Oh, please. Don’t act like you won’t be sneaking in to use my shampoo.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, but her smile grew. “Not any more often than you’ll be sneaking into mine to use my curling iron.”

  “Touché.” I laughed and hooked my thumb toward the hall. “Come on.”

  She stared at me, her lips forming a thin line. “You sure you’re okay with this? This place…” She motioned around the living room. “It’s really going to cut into your bar fund.”

  “I know. But I’ve got time. Besides. I still haven’t heard back from the bank. Who knows. I might get the loan.”

  I’d been jumping through a million hoops for the last month while applying for a small-business loan. I had a ton of experience running my own place from when Kurt and I had been married, but funding one was a different story altogether.

  She walked over and looped her arm with mine. “I feel good things in our future, Mir. This apartment. Your bar. Me finishing school. And it’s only going to get better for us.”

  I swallowed hard and pulled her in for a side squeeze. I didn’t necessarily agree with her.

  But, then again, it wasn’t like it could get worse.

  Three months before I lost her…

  “You’re crazy as hell,” I laughed, crushing an empty beer can before throwing it into the almost empty Styrofoam cooler.

  “Tell me you wouldn’t want a hot tub in your bedroom?” she asked, her mouth split into a hypnotizing smile.

  I’d been under her spell for so long that I never wanted to wake up.

  But I would.

  In a few hours, when I was forced to drive her home and watch her walk to the front door, unsure of when or if I’d ever get her back.

  Being on the wrong side of a love triangle was slippery like that.

  Ignoring the ache in my chest, I shot her a grin, popped another beer open, and passed it her way. “Hot tub belongs on the back deck overlooking the mountains, not tucked away in a bedroom.”

  She arched her thin, brown eyebrow and stared down at the beer. “Why
do you always do that?”

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “Pass it to me for the first sip.”

  I rested my elbows on my legs, which were dangling over the tailgate of my pickup, and cut my gaze to the woods. “No reason.”

  “Bullshit,” she laughed.

  As she reached across me to take the beer, her breasts brushed against my arm.

  My shoulders locked up tight. There wasn’t much of Mira’s body I hadn’t touched. I’d kissed, licked, and memorized her every curve. But I’d never instigated it. Not since the first time.

  I was always a more-than-willing participant, but I needed her to make the first move and choose what was going to happen between us that night.

  Or, more accurately, I needed her to choose me.

  And, right then, as she inched over until our thighs were touching and looped her arm with mine, that was exactly what she had done.

  In that moment, Kurt wasn’t between us.

  On the back of that truck, Mira was mine.

  A small smile played at my lips as I looked up at her.

  Her long, dark hair fell into her face as she rested her head on my shoulder and snuggled in close.

  “You drink too slow. And you dump it out when it gets too warm,” I said, sweeping her hair over her shoulder so I could see her better. “If we share one, you always have a cold beer and I don’t have to watch you water the pine needles with my hard-earned cash.”

  Her eyes twinkled in the moonlight as she took a sip and then passed it back. “Fair enough, but why do you always give me the first sip?”

  I shrugged.

  “Be careful. I might confuse you for a gentleman, Jeremy Lark. Next thing you know, you’re going to be opening car doors for me and shit.”

  I chuckled and allowed my gaze to flick down to her breasts. “Trust me. I’m no gentleman, Mira.”

  It was a partial lie. Because, while I wasn’t exactly a gentleman yet, for Mira, I would have become a fucking unicorn if that was what she’d wanted me to be.

  She peered up at me, all humor vanishing from her eyes. “I call bullshit again.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, how about this for a gentleman?” I reclined into the bed of the truck, resting the beer on my chest and my head on a rolled-up T-shirt, but there was nothing relaxed about the knot in my stomach. The truth always made me nervous. Mira knew everything about me—except for how much I loved her. The rejection was too much for a guy like me to risk. “I give you the first sip because, when I started doing it, I wanted you more than I’ve wanted anything in my life. And that one damn sip was the only way I could taste you.” Nervously, I glanced at her from the corner of my eye.