Guardian (2 page)

A
lex buckled
Val into the passenger seat of his plain old Corolla. She licked his hands and thumped her fluffy tail until it beat against the upholstery like a drum, and he couldn’t help but laugh.

She was adorable, there were no two ways about it. Tri-colored with more red than black in her face, she hadn’t been docked as a puppy and consequently had the most comical tail he’d seen on a dog. While her face was good at mimicking innocence, her tail would wag nineteen to the dozen and totally give away that she had mischief in mind. She was, all in all, an incredibly poor liar, and he suspected that’s what he loved about her the most.

He didn’t doubt it was in part what children of his clients loved about her, too. When all the adults in their lives weren’t living up to their word, Val was there, and she wouldn’t mislead them or say anything mean to them. She was just happy they were there and paying attention to her.

“Who’s a good girl? Is it you? Yes it is, isn’t it?” He leaned in to kiss the top of her head, but she turned and licked him across the nose and glasses instead. “Eww. I take it back. I take it all back!”

She wagged at him, grinning her ever-present smile.

“Yeah, yeah.” He pulled his glasses off and wiped them on his shirt, but that just smeared her drool around, so he ended up fishing out a cleaning cloth from the glove box.

By the time he was ready to go, Val had lost interest and settled down, curled up on the passenger seat with her chin beside his handbrake.

Alex pulled out of the firm’s parking lot and left the neat but dull little brown building behind him. He could work for a bigger firm, one in Manhattan, if he wanted, but Taylor and Reynolds let him bring Val into the office, and he wasn’t working fourteen-hour days chasing paperwork for the senior partners. He got to handle his own caseload, and the firm hired a pool of administrators to do as much of the filing and fetching so that their valuable attorneys were actually doing their real jobs most of the time.

The only downside was that both Taylor and Reynolds themselves were a bit old-fashioned. And plain old. While they weren’t patting the administrative staff’s bums all day, it wasn’t unheard of for one or the other of them to call one of the ladies “sweetheart” or badger the youngest of them to get married. It was weirdly invasive for the twenty-first century, and Alex wasn’t entirely sure he’d like to find out what they’d do if they ever realised he was gay. He might end up forced into one of those fourteen-hour jobs over on the island.

He grimaced at the thought.

Then he grimaced at a knocking sound from the engine.

“Urgh. What the hell?”

He eased off the gas and was rewarded with a honk from the car behind him, but the knock came again. And again. His speed didn’t seem to matter, and it was getting louder.

Alex gritted his teeth, then sighed and pulled his phone from his pocket. “OK Google, show me the nearest auto mechanic.”

He snapped his phone into the plastic cradle stuck to his windshield and changed lanes so he could start to follow the route it plotted out for him.

H
e was only
five blocks from the mechanic, which was tucked away down a little side street filled with small businesses and pizza delivery joints. The sign above the wide-open entrance was hand-painted on a sheet of wood that looked suspiciously like it used to be a door:

But it was still open at six in the evening, so it would have to do.

Alex tucked the Corolla into the tiny parking lot out front. Val bounced up in her seat, her tail wagging as she strained against the seatbelt and she tried to peer over the dash.

“No, we’re not home, sweetie.” He reached over to the back seat for her leash, then unclipped her harness from the seatbelt and clipped the leash onto it instead. “Come on. Let’s see how much Daddy’s going to get screwed for.”

He eased out of the car and waited for Val to bounce out after him. She immediately set her nose to task exploring the strange new environment, her tail curling happily over her back, and he clicked his tongue at her. “Come on. This way.”

She trotted ahead and looked over her shoulder at him as he headed for the interior of the shop. There were four vehicles in there, all every bit as old as his own car, so maybe this place wasn’t as bad as it looked.

“Hello?” he called as he stepped from the sunlight and into the gloom. “Anyone home?”

“Hey. Yeah. Just a second.” The voice which answered him was a deep, booming thing, and it seemed to come from a door off to one side of the shop. An office, maybe, or a waiting room.

“Sure.” Alex waited where he was, and kept an eye on Val to stop her putting her nose in anything dangerous.

Heavy footsteps sounded from the side room, and Alex looked up in time to see a man emerge from the doorway.

A man so big that he looked like he had to go through sideways to fit.

Alex’s mouth dried and his throat closed. His skin tingled. His cock pulsed.

Edwards——if that’s who this was——was a beast. Easily a full five inches over six feet tall, his chest was so broad that it strained at the once-white t-shirt which fought to cover the corded muscles beneath the flimsy cloth. Sweat and hard work had molded that material to every single ripple, every individual ridge, and left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Smudges of motor oil, grease and dirt just seemed to emphasize the raw masculinity of this glorious monster, streaked in lines like war paint over his chest.

His arms were like coiled pythons which burst from his shirt like the material had given up trying to contain them. Both were tattooed all the way down to his wrists with some decoration which wrapped around his limbs in a spiral. As Edwards stepped closer, Alex realized the tattoos were identical: feathers, all flowing downward from his shoulders and ending in wingtips just above his hands. The ink was stark and black, and the artist had used blank space to create the fine detail of the feathers, as though light were reflected from them. Even the man’s hands were massive, easily twice the size of Alex’s own, and he couldn’t help but imagine what it might feel like to have them roughly exploring his body.

Alex managed to tear his gaze upward, but that didn’t help him out at all. Edwards was brutally handsome, his jaw a razor-sharp edge and his cheekbones in flawless symmetry with his jawline. His eyes were bright, hard with intelligence, and radiant blue even in the dim light of the shop. The man’s brown hair was cropped at the sides, and only slightly longer on top.

Everything about him made Alex want to give himself over like a damn prize turkey, and he shivered in spite of the warm spring air.

Edwards stopped a couple of feet from him and looked down to Val, then offered Alex a pearly-white smile. “Can I help you, sir?”

Heat flooded Alex’s cheeks, and he swallowed. His cock pulsed again, insistent and tyrannical, and he fought to take a breath. “Uh. Um.” He coughed and adjusted his posture, clasping one hand around the other wrist in an attempt to hide his slowly surfacing erection. “Yes, you can.” He blinked rapidly. “Uh, I hope. Probably. I mean, yes. I have a car.”

If Edwards had noticed Alex’s growing bulge, he didn’t show. Instead his gaze took on some kind of timeworn patience. “That’s a good start,” he rumbled dryly.

“Right.” Alex laughed nervously, then realized he sounded like a total idiot, so he cut it short. “Anyway, it’s making like this banging noise, and this was the closest mechanic in the area and I kinda hoped you might be able to look at it.”

“Sure thing, though I’m closing up soon. But if you want to give me your keys, I’ll check it out now for you.”

One of those huge hands came toward Alex, palm upward, and Alex bit his lip to keep himself from making a sound. The palm was callused, slightly darker patches of rough skin contrasted against the pink of his hand, and Alex just
knew
that roughness would feel good against his own soft office-bound ass.

He managed to hand his keys over without making it even more awkward, and watched as Edwards walked out to the Corolla.

The mechanic’s ass was tight enough to crack walnuts between his cheeks.

Alex stared at it. An ass like that made all kinds of promises. The kind of promises which would keep a guy awake all night, then leave him barely able to walk straight for days after.

He had to force himself to look away as Edwards squeezed into the Corolla. He couldn’t let himself get caught staring, even if he wanted to.

He couldn’t keep making the same mistake. Jesus, when would he ever learn? Every single time, every one of these big, hulking bad boy types actually turned out to be a bad boy, and Alex got hurt. He had to stop this thing he had for guys who could overpower him, throw him around like he weighed nothing, push him down and pin him with their weight while they pounded his—

Alex groaned and gripped Val’s leash harder. He risked a glance out at the car to check Edwards wasn’t looking, then he quickly adjusted himself.

He was
not
going to fall for this guy, no matter what his cock thought.

“Your dog’s pretty.”

Alex blinked at the unexpected lightness of a young girl’s voice, and he turned toward it in time to see a little girl with blond pigtails crouch down and get licked in the face. The girl squealed with laughter and patted Val’s side.

“She is,” he agreed. His heart melted as the girl ruffled Val’s fur. “Is, um. Is Mr. Edwards your dad?”

“No. He’s my uncle.” She smiled up at Alex. “We were doing my math homework.”

“Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“It’s okay. I don’t like math.” Her grin turned impish in a flash, and Alex couldn’t help but laugh along with her.

“Not many people do,” he agreed. “But it’s super useful for when you grow up.”

“That’s what my uncle says, too.” She shrugged and went back to fussing Val.

“Sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.” Alex glanced out to the Corolla in time to see Edwards ease himself free of it and lock the doors. The appearance of Edwards’ niece had managed to slap Alex back into the land of common sense, thank God, so he was able to watch the man’s approach without going all wobbly at the knees this time.

“Crankshaft pulley,” Edwards said as he offered the keys over.

“Er.” Alex took the keys and blinked up at him. “Is that good?”

“Nope. But you should have a hundred miles in it before anything breaks. You live near here?”

“Only about ten miles away.”

“No problem, then. If you bring it back in the morning I’ll fix her right up for you. It’s a full day’s job, though.”

Alex nodded while he tried to work out how best to get into work from here. He’d have to figure out where the nearest bus stop was, maybe. Or he could find a mechanic with a more convenient location now that he knew he had a good bit of mileage before his car died altogether.

Nuh uh. No. No way. Even if it couldn’t go anywhere with Edwards, Alex wasn’t all that sure he couldn’t at least
see
the guy one more time. There was a world of difference between window-shopping and buying, after all.

“Okay, sure. Thanks, Mr. Edwards—”

“Titus.”

“Son of Vespasian?” Alex’s lips curled upward at the oddity of finding such a huge, powerful man with the name of a Roman emperor.

“Ha.” Edwards’ own features contorted into a grin. “Most people think Andronicus. Call me Ty. I’ll see you in the morning, sir. We’re open from eight a.m. onward.”

“Great. Thank you. I’ll be here!”

Alex urged Val to follow as he hurried off to his car. He opened the door for her to jump in, and after she’d jumped from the foot well up onto her passenger seat, he switched her harness from the leash to the seatbelt.

He tossed the leash onto the rear seat and slid into the driver’s side, then felt Val’s eyes boring into his head. He turned to look at her.

She was staring at him.

“Shut up,” he muttered. “He’s hot, okay?”

She didn’t look away.

The warmth returned to his face, and Alex started the car, but he could feel her staring at him all the way home.

T
y arrived
a little before eight in the morning the next day and, after he’d unlocked the shop and rolled up the shutters, he spent a few minutes moving vehicles out into the parking lot to clear room inside and make it easier for customers to collect them throughout the day.

It was ten past eight when he heard the distinctive banging of a faulty crankshaft pulley arrive in the parking lot. He’d already ordered the replacement last night, as well as the pin which held it in place, so it was just as well the guy had bothered to return. Ty moved to the shop entrance to wave the customer in and save himself the trouble of moving the Corolla. Fitting into commercial cars was usually a pain in the ass.

He guided the Corolla into the spot he wanted, up onto the hydraulic car lift, then gave the driver a thumbs up.

The man was just as smartly dressed as he had been yesterday. He was slim, too, like a swimmer or a marathon runner. The tailored lines of his clothing ran almost straight, from his shoulders to his well-polished shoes, and even though he was several inches shorter than Ty, the man carried himself with confidence. He had such pretty eyes, too, behind his glasses. Bright blue, like a summer sky.

Ty blinked. Where the hell had
that
come from?

“Morning.” The shorter man’s cheeks were bright pink, and his lips a delicate shade of rose. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a waiting room, have you? I couldn’t find any easy way to get to the office from here, but I don’t have any meetings on the calendar today, so I can work out of here if that’s okay with you?” His speech came out in a single breath, and he almost hiccupped at the end of it.

Ty mulled it over, then offered the guy his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name yesterday, sir.”

“Oh! It’s Alexander. Alex. Wilson,” he added as he slipped his soft hand into Ty’s callused one. “Alex is fine.”

Ty shook his hand. “Well if you’ve got work to do, you’re welcome to use my office. If it gets too loud out here for you, you can shut the door.”

“You’ve just saved my life. Give me a minute.”

Ty watched with amusement as Alex returned to his car and set about putting that cute dog of his on a leash. He was leaning over for a while as he reached past the dog for something else, and Ty’s eyes roamed along those long, slender legs and up to his pert little ass.

He sucked on his lower lip and frowned as he found somewhere else to look. He needed to get out of his funk and find a nice woman to take on a date sometime soon, ’cause it seemed like the dry spell was doing weird things to his concentration.

“All right. Keys are in the ignition.”

Ty turned back to Alex and found him close by with the dog’s leash in one hand and a large briefcase in the other. He’d hooked one of those Bluetooth earpieces into place, and with his smart suit and freshly-shaved jawline he looked pretty handsome. For a guy. Assuming Ty was any decent judge of that kind of thing. Which he wasn’t, because he had zero experience of checking out guys, and he sure as hell wasn’t doing it now.

“Right. Yes, sir.” Training was good to fall back on when the brain failed to supply anything better, and he was damn grateful for it.

Alex gave him a peculiar little look up through those long, fair lashes of his. Ty didn’t know what to make of it. “You don’t have to call me sir all the time.”

Ty managed a shrug. “I don’t think it’s ever a bad thing to respect your customers.”

“Ah.” Alex’s eyes drifted to Ty’s arms, then he flashed a warm smile. “Oh! Military?”

A smile tugged at Ty’s lips. Alex might be a suit, but he was a perceptive one, it seemed. “Yes, sir.”

“Then it’s me who should be calling
you
sir.” Alex moved the leash into a precarious grip with his briefcase’s handle so he could offer his hand once more. “Thank you,” he said, his voice and his eyes suddenly sincere. “I know it’s the kind of thing people say really easily, and perhaps it doesn’t always carry the weight it should, but thank you.”

Ty wrapped his fingers around Alex’s smaller hand, and shook it slowly. “That’s kind of you to say, sir.”

“And I mean it. I can’t even pretend to know what you’ve experienced, but to know that you put yourself out there for us?” Alex nodded as he squeezed Ty’s hand. “It’s humbling.”

Ty nodded numbly and watched as Alex steered his comically short dog across the shop and into his office.

The guy was some kind of puzzle. Ty wasn’t used to suits giving a damn about what he might have been through, and he sure as hell wasn’t used to their thanks being so honest. He wasn’t used to most of them even giving him the time of day, since his size and tattoos usually instilled some kind of visceral terror in them.

Alex was different, but whether or not that mattered probably wouldn’t mean anything once the crankshaft pulley got replaced. He was some kind of desk jockey with a nine-to-five and a fancy suit.

Why would he ever want to spend time with a guy like Ty?

A
s Ty worked
on getting the bolt off, he heard Alex on his first phone call of what would turn out to be several. It wasn’t right to eavesdrop, but he couldn’t help it. Alex sounded so sure and confident on his phone calls, yet Ty had seen him as a nervous, flustered thing last night.

It wasn’t easy to listen in to the finer details, and after he heard Alex use words like
subpoena
and
injunction
he decided it was better if he stopped trying altogether. If Wilson was some kind of attorney it explained his fancy suit, but it also meant that his phone calls should remain private.

Ty beavered away inside the engine, taking the time to assess the crankshaft pin and the belt in case either had been damaged. The belt had a few nibbles on it, and while the pin looked okay, he decided to change it to be on the safe side. With the crankshaft knocking about like that it was entirely possible the pin had endured metal fatigue and could shear off at some random point in the future, which would leave Alex stranded wherever it happened.

The Corolla wasn’t new. It had ten years behind it, and over eighty thousand miles on the clock. It seemed at odds with Alex’s nice flattering suit that he ran such a utilitarian vehicle. Ty imagined that attorneys were all rolling around in shiny European cars with more power under the hood than they’d ever use, but this car was pretty sensible. It could be that Alex wasn’t a very good attorney, but Ty found it hard to entertain that possibility for too long. The tone of his phone calls was too sure, too informed, for the guy to be a shyster.

He pulled back from the engine and stretched, then wiped his hands on the rag tucked into his belt and strolled to the office. He listened to make sure Alex wasn’t on the phone, then knocked on the doorframe. “Hey. I’m getting a water. You want anything?”

Alex looked up, and suddenly his face was lit from within as it broke into a radiant smile. “Some water would be great. Thank you.”

Ty watched that smile, bewitched by it, then cleared his throat. “Right. Uh. The dog. Does she want anything? I can get her a bowl or something?”

Alex reached into the open briefcase on his desk and pulled out some sort of rubber disk with a flourish. “Already got one. But water for her would be awesome.”

Ty raised his eyebrows, and Alex poked the center of the disk until it popped out into a bowl-shape. “Huh. Clever. Okay. Be right back.”

He headed for the water cooler, and came back with a plastic cup in each hand. It was only when he stepped up to the desk that he saw the dog behind it, laying flat on her back with her stumpy little legs in the air and her bright white belly exposed.

Alex looked down, then laughed. “She does that,” he murmured as he took the water. “She’s very graceful,” he added. “Thanks.”

“Oh yeah, she looks it.” Ty smirked. “What’s her name?”

“Val.”

“Valerie?”

“Nooo. Valentina.” Those blue eyes shone with excitement. “I named her after Valentina Tereshkova. She was the first woman in space.”

“Space nerd, huh?” Ty grinned.

“Yeah. I won’t bore you, though. Don’t worry.”

I doubt you could ever bore me
. Ty pressed his lips together and tried to shoo the rogue thought away. “It’s fine,” he said. “Anyway. I better get back to work.”

“Oh, okay.” Alex’s smile drifted away slowly, and he sipped his water. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Ty took himself away from the attorney before any more nonsense stuff could take root in his brain.

H
e alerted
Alex when the food truck came by and they shared a lunch in Ty’s office with Val staring at them both like she never got fed.

“Man, how do you eat with those eyes drilling into you like this?” he muttered after five minutes.

“You’ve got to block it out.” Alex chuckled. “She’s a gannet. She’ll eat until she explodes if she gets the chance. Don’t let her fool you.”

Ty groaned and tried to focus on his sandwich, but the big brown eyes of the adorable little dog were almost palpable. “If I just—”

“Oh, no.” Alex shook his head. “Don’t fall for it, Ty.”

Ty watched Alex’s lips as they shaped his name. Those lips were swollen and moist from the spiciness of the chilli and cheese torta he’d bought from the food truck, and when they parted to utter the word
Ty
it was like they bypassed his senses and spoke directly to his skin, which tingled in response.

Ty choked and reached for his water, downing it all in three gulps.

“Are you okay?” Alex put his sandwich down and wiped his fingers on a napkin.

Ty thumped his chest and coughed, then nodded. “Yeah,” he gasped. “Yeah, just… went down the wrong way, you know?”

Alex gave a slight nod and observed him a moment, then lifted his torta once he seemed satisfied.

Ty raised an eyebrow at that. It was a good, solid response. A
trained
response. “You a first responder?”

Alex smiled sheepishly. “Busted.”

“Huh. I thought you were an attorney.”

“I’m that obvious?” Alex laughed. “I’m in family law. It’s always useful to have first aid training in the office in case anyone’s taken ill.” He pulled a business card from his pocket and set it down on Ty’s desk.

Ty peeked across at it.

The office address was Forest Hills. Not a fancy island attorney, then, though Forest Hills was nothing to be sniffed at.

“And it helps to be able to spot injuries children might be trying to hide,” Alex finally added, his voice switching to the calm, professional one Ty had heard him use on the phone all morning.

Ty looked him over like he could somehow peel away all those onion layers with his eyes. Every hour seemed to add more pieces to the puzzle while similarly diminishing the amount of time Ty had in which to solve it.
Perceptive. First responder. Family law. Space nerd. Corgi. Attorney. Tailored suit. Old Corolla. Vegetarian. Attractive, probably, to women.

He stuffed the rest of his Reuben into his mouth and stood. “I better get back to work,” he said as soon as he could.

Alex smiled up at him, gaze peeking above the slender frames of his glasses. “Same here.”

Ty grunted and hurried back out to the car to finish the job. The sooner he got rid of this particular customer the better.