In a fix torus intercess.., p.1
In A Fix: Torus Intercession Book Two, page 1
In A Fix
Mary Calmes
Mary Calmes Books, LLC.
Contents
Acknowledgments
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
A Note From the Author
Also by Mary Calmes
About the Author
In A Fix
Copyright ©2020 Mary Calmes
http://marycalmes.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of author imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted on the cover is a model.
Cover art Copyright © 2020 Reese Dante
http://reesedante.com
Edited by Lisa Horan
Copy Edit by Brian Holliday
Proof Edit by Judy’s Proofreading
Assistant Jessie Potts
Created with Vellum
Acknowledgments
This book would not have come together, or made sense in the least, without the amazing, grueling work of my wonderful editor, Lisa Horan. Much like Frankenstein, she brought my creation to life. I owe her big. Huge. Dinner is on me.
My amazing team, Brian and Judy, who do their magic, I appreciate all you do so much, the amazing Reese Dante who made Croy for me from thin air, and of course, my wonderful assistant, Jessie who checks to make sure I’m alive. Nothing happens without all of you, thank you so much.
And thank you all, my wonderful readers, for your patience with me in getting Croy’s book out. It took me a bit to find his voice and I do hope you enjoy his story.
In A Fix
How can a man unaware of his own worth ever hope to value anyone else…
Croy Esca is a fixer at Torus Intercession, paid to guard, advocate for, and help those in need of the services his boss, Jared Colter, provides. But that doesn’t mean he’s willing to expend the energy to invest himself in the people he’s assigned to help. Professionally, Croy goes in, gets the job done, and doesn’t allow for anything that might resemble interest—which mirrors the way he handles his personal life as well. He’s been described as aloof, apathetic, and incapable of feeling anything approaching empathy despite his boss’s continual mentoring.
Those lessons aren’t easily learned, though, when you’ve been taught that you’re expendable.
When Croy is assigned to act as bodyguard to a billionaire during a long weekend trip to Las Vegas, he expects another in and out job made all the more tedious by the company he’ll be keeping, and his loathing of Sin City. What he ends up with, however, is far more than he bargained for.
FBI Special Agent Dallas Bauer is good at what he does, some might even say he’s consumed by his work, to the point of insomnia and at the cost to anything resembling a full life. Hit it and quit it is Dallas’s grind. Then Croy Esca comes crashing into his life, and it doesn’t take long before he’s struck by how desperate he is to make sure the fixer doesn’t become the one that got away.
When Croy’s assignment evolves into something so much more dangerous and complicated than he could have ever predicted, and his and Dallas’s lives collide, the fixer finds himself in a fix. One Croy is not altogether sure he wants to escape.
One
It was predawn, on a bitterly cold February morning, and I was sitting on an airplane, on a Wednesday, on the tarmac at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, currently not taking off, perhaps reevaluating my choice in careers, and maybe cursing my boss, Jared Colter, a little bit, for sending me on this assignment. Vegas? Who voluntarily goes to Vegas? What happens there, stays there—like that was supposed to be clever or edgy or something. And yet, here I sat, trapped inside a metal germ tube with a hundred other bleary-eyed souls, and apparently we were just going to try taxiing all the way to Nevada, now… Maybe drinking until I passed out wasn’t such a bad idea.
As usual, I had been the first one to arrive at the offices of Torus Intercession the morning before, so I put the coffee on for my colleagues and tea for myself. Because I was civilized, for God’s sake. I’d been on the receiving end of more than a few snide comments from the guys about my cozy-covered teapot, over the years. Until, that is, Jared started drinking whatever I brewed. After that, the snark dried up pretty damn fast. If the alpha male, ex-CIA, black ops guy drank tea, then I got a pass too.
It was still dark and overcast outside when the rest of the guys started trickling in, the contrast between the warm glow in the office and the winter’s gloom marked by Jared’s preference in lighting. Our boss hated the harsh glare of florescent bulbs and declared, in no uncertain terms, that no one thrived in that kind of synthetic environment, which was why we all had desk lamps to complement the overhead track lighting. At the moment, the lamp beside Locryn Barnes’s monitor was illuminating the blue-black highlights in his thick shoulder-length hair and making his eyes glitter like obsidian as they lifted to me.
“Fuck you, Croy.”
“Locryn,” I began gently, kindly, trying for patience, “the rest of the team barely tolerates you. I’m your sole advocate; try not to alienate me before lunch.”
It’s true I admired beauty wherever, or whenever, I encountered it, and Loc had taken my breath away from the first moment I saw him. He was a remarkable study of sharp angles and curved, rippling muscles under smooth olive skin, with a face that could have been sculpted by a Renaissance master. The artist in me recognized how breathtaking he truly was. The spell woven by his appearance was broken, however—quickly and decisively—when he opened his mouth.
It was unfortunate he had to speak. Ever.
“Good morning,” I greeted Cooper Davis as he hung his coat on the rack by his desk.
Locryn grunted, as was his way, not the king of communication by a long shot, and I didn’t miss that he and Cooper weren’t speaking.
“Morning,” Cooper muttered his reply, his eyes flicking to Locryn and then to me. “Did you make coffee, or just the tea of your people?”
He was alluding to the extra strong Irish Breakfast I normally made.
“Just so we’re clear, it’s the tea of his people, not mine,” I apprised him with a tip of my head at Locryn. “I’m having Earl Grey this morning, for your edification, though I was kind enough to get your black tar brewing as well.”
“Bless you,” he said kindly, gifting me with a trace of a smile before standing and walking toward the back. “For someone who doesn’t even drink coffee, yours is always good. Way better than the rest of us manage.”
My smirk was smug, I knew, but the man was not lying. I’d smelled some of the stuff he’d tried to brew. It was unholy.
I turned back to Locryn, who glanced up at the same time.
“What?” he half snarled, glaring at me.
I barely stifled my groan. “Could you at least do me the courtesy of not acting like a complete ass first thing in the morning?” His constant belligerence was so much more than grating.
“The fuck did you say?” he bristled, evident in the way his voice rose an entire octave, and in the way his eyebrows furrowed over the bridge of his nose. His scowl alone was menacing, but made even more so by the chroma of his dark eyes, black brows and hair. Locryn Barnes was the perfect storm of fire and ice, and I seemed to be the only one who knew how to handle him.
“Listen, I know why you’re angry,” I offered, sick of him walking around being nothing but foul for the two months since Brann Calder, our former colleague, quit. They had become lovers soon after Brann started working at Torus, and the fact that they thought no one knew was ludicrous. The sexual tension had been knife-cutting thick, and a constant source of eye-rolling for the rest of us. I hadn’t thought it was serious, just the two of them having fun and letting off steam, but the way Locryn was living under a cloud of what came across as both anger and frustration, I now surmised it was far more serious than I’d given the situation credit for. Maybe it had been special for Locryn but not for Brann. Whatever the case, I truly only cared insomuch as the rest of us were left to deal with a surly, brooding, hair-trigger Irishman, while Brann was happy and in love off in Montana.
I had, in fact, landed my job with Torus thanks to others who’d left the company for similar reasons as Brann. Jared had explained in my first interview why those positions had been vacated, and I was utterly baffled, still, that good fixers could just up and leave, would choose to leave, for no other reason than they’d fallen in love with their clients. I was willing to entertain the possibility, though, that what had happened with Brann was a natural aftereffect of this job for some people, which required so much time and close proximity with the clientele.
Torus Intercession offered advocacy to people who needed so
Now, I had to wonder if Jared thought about there being a pattern there, as in when a fixer did their job well, the person who reaped the benefit of it naturally wanted to keep them.
Maybe I’d ask him someday. Or better yet, I could have Nash ask. I had a suspicion that Jared liked him best, after Owen.
The bottom line was, sleeping with someone you worked with seemed like a recipe for disaster to me.
“Why the hell do you think I’m mad?” Locryn barked, reminding me that we were having a conversation that I had momentarily vacated.
“It’s too early for this,” I informed him, trying, and failing, not to sound snide. “I have to get myself a cup of tea; shall I pour you some coffee while I’m there?” With him, the best thing was not to throw gasoline on an already blazing fire, so I stood silent and waited while he stewed and grew more irritated by the second, his square jaw clenched tight.
“Loc?” I prodded the bear.
“Fine,” he retorted defiantly, as though he were doing me a favor.
“Who made the coffee?” Shaw James bellowed as I crossed the room moments later, careful not to spill either mug of hot liquid I was carrying.
“I did,” I answered, glancing over at him, smiling automatically—it was the polite thing to do, after all—as I placed my teacup on my own desk before walking over to Locryn’s and depositing his enormous mug of caffeine near his phone, out of harm’s way.
He glanced at it, checking the color, I was sure, to make certain it was close to a wheat brown, full of all the sugar and cream he required. “Thanks,” he muttered under his breath.
Lord, he was a pain in the ass. I needed to let him know that brooding only worked for tortured Jane Austen characters and vampires on the CW.
“Get me one, will you?” Nash Miller begged Shaw, sinking down into the chair at his desk, moving slowly, wincing, until he was finally settled, forehead pressed into his hand.
“You should’ve stayed home,” Shaw called back over his shoulder.
Turning to Nash, I ventured, “Too much to drink?” Not accusing him, as I would the others, because he was Nash and that just wasn’t like him. I liked Nash. He was gentle and calm, and the way he carried himself spoke to an inherent grace that he tried to hide behind the same alpha-male bluster the others spewed.
Locryn, Cooper, Shaw, even me—and Brann, before he left—were drinkers. Nash was much more likely to be pulling kittens out of trees at three in the morning.
He shook his head. “My neighbors had a fight last night.”
“I’m guessing the ones with the new baby?” I asked, because he had people on both sides of him, but one was a lovely woman who made him the most amazing food. They looked like empanadas filled with a spicy beef, and they were one of the best things I’d ever eaten. On the other side was the young couple who had only been there a couple of months. My money was on them.
“Yeah,” he confirmed with a groan, laying his head down on his arms, now folded on the desk. “The husband and some other guy were yelling at each other, and I was afraid the wife and the baby would get hurt, so I went over there. I didn’t realize that the new guy brought a baseball bat until he took a swing at me.”
“Did they both end up assaulting you?” I asked, noting the slight shudder in his broad shoulders. I wanted to comfort him, but at the same time, I didn’t want to seem too forward by touching him. It wasn’t my strong suit, being unguarded with people or offering comfort. I made people feel safe with my presence, with my self-defense skills and my gun. But I wasn’t, as a rule, a touchy-feely guy. I wasn’t the one to offer a shoulder to cry on or give a quick hug for comfort. More often than not, Jared heard that I was efficient and robotic, competent though a bit aloof, or capable but cold.
I was the guy who was up, tucked in and zipped up, anxious to escape the apartment of the hookup of the moment before the sheets cooled; the post-sex cuddle was never on the table. One guy had even told me that he had mistaken me for a human being, and that I had ice running through my veins. It was fair to say that me thawing for anyone would be a gross exaggeration. That was not who I was.
“Remember, not everyone is as strong as you’ve had to be, Esca,” my boss told me often, using my last name, as he did with all of us. “Practice empathy and mindfulness.”
God.
“Nash?” I prodded him, my hand hovering over his shoulder.
“Yeah,” he said, exhaling carefully, like it might have hurt.
“Were you attacked by both men?”
He grunted, which was as good as a yes.
“Do you need to go to the hospital?”
“I went last night,” he explained, tilting his head up so he could see me as I stepped back. “My buddy Rais took me. That’s the only reason I’m here this morning. He’s coming in to talk to Jared about filling Brann’s spot.”
“You don’t know that he’s never—”
“Yes, I do,” Nash snapped, his tone brittle, implacable, cutting Locryn off, glaring at him for good measure. “I’ve talked to him. I have an open invitation to go visit him, so—yeah, Loc, I fuckin’ know that Brann’s not coming back, all right?”
Locryn glanced away, but even though we couldn’t see his face, the wounded pride clung to him, telegraphed by his body language. If he needed something to kick, I hoped he wouldn’t opt for his solid mahogany desk. If he took a shot at that, he might break a toe.
“Good morning.”
Pivoting, I saw a man standing just inside the front door of our office.
“Good morning,” I greeted the stranger, immediately struck by the bright sepia color of his eyes. His dark bronze skin was accented beautifully by the mustard yellow scarf and camel-colored Burberry peacoat he wore.
His smile was quick, bright, but I noticed that his attention moved from me and pounced on Nash, almost immediately.
“You shouldn’t have come in,” he said, rushing by me to reach Nash. He took hold of Nash’s shoulder, then slid a hand under his chin to lift his face.
Nash growled and tilted his head back, trying to move out of the man’s grip.
“Knock it off. Let me look at you.”
“You looked at me last night,” Nash said irritably, huffing out a breath, nailing the guy with his glower. “Aren’t you supposed to be downtown, meeting Jared for breakfast?”
“For your information, I did that already,” he grumbled, squinting at Nash. “And I got the job because he liked the whole Army Ranger thing, but more importantly, it was your recommendation that sealed it.”
Nash instantly deflated. “Oh yeah?”
The two men were close; it was evident in their warm tone of voice and the glowers they were giving one another, waiting for the other guy to crack.
“Yeah,” came the retort, one dark eyebrow lifting in a dare.
After a moment, Nash grinned wide. “Hey, everybody, this is my old army buddy, Rais Solano, and he’s gonna be workin’ with us.”
Locryn gave him a head tip, Cooper moved in fast and shook Rais’s hand, Shaw was next, quick with the welcome, and then me.
And that’s when the very charming, and frankly beautiful, Rais Solano ruined my day and told me that Jared Colter wanted me to go into his office because there was a file on his desk for me. It was why I was now on a plane headed for Vegas.
