Ice Cold (An MMA Stepbrother Romance) (27 page)

My heart jumped in my throat for her. His hands were shaking, he was obviously furious at her about something, and the group of people around were too obviously scared to do anything. Everyone just watched as he continued to yell.

Suddenly, I saw my brother come in from behind and knock the man’s hand down. I gasped as Kiegan’s surprise attack knocked the man over, and they struggled on the floor. My face was practically pressed against the glass as I tried to see what was happening, but the distance and the group of people who suddenly swarmed around the fight stopped me from getting a good look.

When the gun went off, though, that was when all hell broke loose. I knew Kiegan had told me to stay up here, and I knew it was safest if I did what he asked, but I was still worried. I ran out of the room and down the stairs. The bouncer guarding the VIP entrance was long gone, probably trying to make his way to the gunman as well.

Everyone in the club was careening towards the exits. It was a complete madhouse, I was pretty sure if anyone fell over they’d be trampled to death. People pushed against me, and while I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going, I figured if I went away from people running to the exits I’d be heading in the right general direction.

Eventually all the people running past had dispersed, and there were only a few people left on the floor. The neo-Nazi was on his back, with about four enormous bouncers holding him down on the floor. Karen was on her phone in the corner. About two feet away, with another bouncer helping him, was Kiegan, holding his arm and wincing as blood flowed through his fingers.

“Holy shit, Kiegan, are you ok?” I exclaimed, rushing over to him. He smiled ruefully.

“Never been better.”

I rolled my eyes and looked around to find something to stem the bleeding with. Before I got a chance, however, a couple of paramedics showed up, followed closely by some police officers.

Karen immediately got off the phone, relieved, and made her way over to the paramedics.

“He’s the one who was shot,” she told them, pointing to Kiegan. Then she turned to the cops. “I’ve got my main tech guy coming in, he’s going to get you all of the security footage straight away, but that’s the man there,” she told them, pointing to the neo-Nazi on the floor, who was still groaning and struggling to get away from the men on top of him.

I had to admire Karen’s composure as I just stood around with my mouth wide open, watching Kiegan, watching as the paramedics made their way over to him and loaded him up on a stretcher. I was so caught up in watching him that it took a second for me to realize that one of the police officers was talking to me.

“Miss, did you see what happened?”

“Um, somewhat. I was up there,” I replied, pointing to the VIP rooms. “I saw from the window.”

“Good, I’d like to take your statement please.”

“Can I… go with him?” I asked, motioning to Kiegan who was being hauled away. Why did I care? I didn’t even like the guy. Hell, I hated him. Two months ago I probably would have gone out to celebrate if I’d learned he was shot.

“I’d rather take your statement straight away if you don’t mind. Then I’ll have an officer drive you to the hospital to see him.”

Noticing my worried face, he added, “don’t worry miss, I’ve seen plenty of people shot in the arm, and none of them have died.”

I laughed a dry laugh that I could tell made me sound like a crazy person.

“I don’t even know why I care,” I whispered, and I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. Maybe it was too much champagne. Maybe it was the emotions of the day. But all I wanted to do was go home and cry my eyes out.

Instead I spent fifteen minutes with the man who turned out to be Detective Lane, recounting everything that had happened. It was funny, even though I was telling him what I’d seen, repeating one of the most traumatic experiences of my life in my brain, it still didn’t feel real. It felt like I was telling a story, or repeating the plot to a TV show.

Finally, Detective Lane thanked me, and escorted me to a waiting cop car with lights flashing. I got in the back and breathed a huge sigh.

“I’m sorry about your… boyfriend?” the officer in the front seat ventured, a woman in her early 30s.

“Boss. And brother. Stepbrother, really,” I clarified.

“Oh, sorry,” the officer blushed.

“No, it’s no problem. Thanks for the ride.”

“My pleasure. I’m heading over to take his statement anyway, so when Detective Lane asked me to hold on a bit I didn’t mind. I imagine the doctors will be taking a bit of time stitching him up anyway.”

“Do you know if he’s ok?”

The officer nodded. “Yeah. I heard through the radio from my partner that it’s just a through-and-through, missed the major arteries, he’s just going to have a pretty sore arm for a while.”

“Good,” I muttered to myself, but still unable to ignore the relief that washed over me. Maybe it was just a natural human reaction. Maybe if I had really wanted him seriously hurt or dead there would have been something wrong with me.

When we got to the hospital, I followed the officer into the emergency room, where a nurse directed us down the hall. We found Kiegan sitting up on a bed being stitched up by a doctor. He was shirtless, dried blood on his arm, his muscles clenching from the pain, the tattoos covering his chest moving with every little twitch of his muscles.

He looked over at me and grinned.

“Hey,” he nodded. The officer took out her notebook.

“Mr. Hunt, I’d like to get a statement from you about what happened.”

“Sure. He was threatening the chick with his gun, I went down there to stop him, we struggled, the gun went off, and luckily it only hit my arm.” He flashed her that smile that made all the panties of every girl at the Moreton Academy wet when we were kids, and I pushed the fact that his list of conquests now included me to the back of my head.

The officer went through Kiegan’s story in more detail, then she thanked him and left.

“Couldn’t resist coming to see if I was ok, could you?” Kiegan teased when we were left alone, the only barrier between us and the chaos of a big city emergency room at 3am being a tiny cloth curtain on rails.

“I figured if you were dead I’d want to see the body for myself. You know, just to make sure.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint. I’m still here. You should want me alive anyway, I sign your paychecks after all.”

“True, I guess you do have some use to me still alive.”

“Besides,” he continued, reaching over and gently placing his hands on my hips, “I can think of another reason why you’d want me around besides my signature.”

I pulled away instantly, but not before I noticed my heart begin to race quicker in my chest.

“Nope, absolutely not. That was a mistake, and I’m going to pretend it never happened.”

Instead of the hurt reaction I imagined, Kiegan just grinned at me again.

“Whatever you say, sis. Now, what do you say we get out of here?”

Twenty minutes and a prescription for painkillers later Kiegan and I were sitting in one of the cars he’d ordered, two of us in a monstrous SUV, heading back to the hotel.

“Why did you do it?” I asked suddenly, breaking the silence that had been lingering between us.

“Do what?”

“Go down there and take on that guy.”

Kiegan just shrugged. “No one else was doing anything.”

“But that doesn’t make it your problem. I mean, the guy had a gun. You had nothing.”

“Except these guns,” Kiegan replied, flexing both arms, then flinching in pain as the bullet wound in his right arm evidently was not completely healed in an hour or so. I rolled my eyes in response. “I had the element of surprise on my side. That was enough.”

“Not quite enough, one of your guns is out of action for a while.”

“That’s true. But the girl’s alive.”

“What was he yelling about, anyway?”

“She left him, he didn’t want her to have a life if it wasn’t with him.”

“That’s so messed up.”

“What’s even more messed up is that there were at least three hundred people in that club. He could have been overpowered so easily, and yet not a single person decided to do anything about it.”

“Well, someone did,” I corrected.

“True. Still.”

“You’re going to get in trouble with the producers.”

“They can deal with it. Did you see the paparazzi when I was taken out in an ambulance?”

I shook my head. They must have all disappeared by the time I had left, I guess they figured no one important was left inside. They were right.

“My picture’s going to be on the front page of TMZ alright. The network people will live. And so will that girl. Way more important than any TV show.”

The car pulled into the hotel and I realized that as much as I thought Kiegan was an asshole, he had probably saved a girl’s life that night.

“See you in the morning. Don’t get hooked on the painkillers.”

“All the cool celebrities have a drug problem.”

“Painkillers aren’t a cool drug.”

“Good night, sis!”

And with that he took long strides to the stairs and made his way up to his room. I shook my head. We were on the 27
th
floor.

It took a while before I managed to get to sleep, the adrenaline coursing through my veins keeping me awake despite the fact that it was almost 5am by the time I got into my room.

I remembered just as I began to drift off to sleep that I had a meeting scheduled at ten, and decided that I’d earned a day to sleep in and blow off a meeting.

Unfortunately, two hours later my phone began to buzz. I saw the New York area code and picked up.

It turned out Good Morning America wanted Kiegan on their show. I told them I’d call them back, and hadn’t managed to even put the phone back down before it began ringing again.

I guess the news of what happened last night has gotten out
, I thought to myself as I put my phone on silent and collapsed back into the bed. One advantage of my boss being a bit of a bad boy was I knew he wouldn’t care if I blew them off for a few hours. Besides, I’d gotten enough experience now to know that these talk shows wanted Kiegan on their show more than he wanted to go on them. I had the upper hand, and I knew it.

When I finally woke up for real, around 1 in the afternoon, I ordered room service and swore that I wasn’t going to leave the bed for the whole day.

I ate my scrambled eggs and bacon while idly watching a bit of TV and going through all the phone calls I’d missed. When I was finished I texted Leanne.

Hey, do you have the schedule for where Kiegan’s going to be for the next week or so?

The reply came in a minute later.

Nope. Everything’s up in the air now. We were supposed to be filming but can’t. What the hell happened last night?

Kiegan saved a girl’s life.

No shit, seriously?

Yeah, what’s the news saying?

He got shot in a club fight.

Well, I guess that’s not strictly wrong.

I’m coming over.

Sure.

Two minutes later there was a knock on my door, and I broke my staying-in-bed-all-day rule to let Leanne in, and took advantage of the break to go pee as well.

“So tell me everything,” Leanne ordered, and I walked her through the whole scene. The way her eyes bulged, it was obvious that she had no idea.

“Wow. So you were right, he did actually save a girl.”

“Yeah. Well I guess so. I mean maybe the guy wouldn’t have shot her, but he sure looked serious about it to me.”

“For sure. Shit, I knew Kiegan was reckless, but that’s pretty up there, even for him.”

“So now what do we do? He can’t film, so what’s the plan?”

“We can do whatever, really. The studio pays for the hotels, so he can go anywhere.”

“Thank God. I have about a million interview requests on my phone, so can we do a New York/LA split over the next week?”

“Sure, but let’s start with New York. They’ve got the bigger news places, the ones that care now, but won’t give a shit about Kiegan in three days.”

“Done. I wonder if I could meet Ellen,” I mused, and Leanne laughed. “Probably. You have the fun job. Mine’s all just conferences and spreadsheets.” She turned serious all of a sudden. “But how are you doing, Tina? After all, it’s not every day that you see your brother get shot.”

I shrugged. “I’m fine. Honestly. I was pretty far away, I didn’t really see anything except the aftermath, you know? And it’s not like he’s dead, he just has a bandage around his arm.”

“Well, if you ever need to talk, you know where to find me. I gotta go, I’ve got some more work to do. I’ll leave you to work out the schedule until the 14
th
, then we’re on Christmas break.”

“Thanks, Leanne. You’re a good friend,” I told her as she left, giving me a hug before she went back to work. I hadn’t even thought about Christmas. I didn’t have anywhere to stay, didn’t have anywhere to go. I leaned back in my bed, making the pillows poof below me. I could go anywhere. Paris, the Bahamas. I had money now! Not a ton of it, sure, but enough that I could go on vacation for a couple of weeks if I wanted to.

Until then, of course, I still had to figure out what we were doing. I got onto the phone with Josh, who agreed with me  that sending all the show staff on holidays early was the best thing; after all, there was nothing for them to do while Kiegan healed from his bullet wound.

I booked hotels for the next week and sent the pilots word of our plans so they could submit a flight plan, then called the people with the biggest audience and booked Kiegan’s spot on their shows. Then I decided I wanted to get up after all. I walked down to the beach, slowly letting my feet sink into the moist sand, letting the cool water of the ocean wash over me. I looked up into the sky and let the rays of the sun wash over my face as I thought about the events from the night before.

Was I wrong about Kiegan? He had gone in and saved a complete stranger. Maybe he wasn’t a total asshole. Except to me.

After about an hour I stopped at an ice cream place, got myself a cone, and headed back to the hotel. We were flying back to New York the next day, and I had to let Kiegan know what shows he was doing.

The Daily Show, Good Morning America, Letterman and Fallon. He was going to be everywhere!

* * *

We flew out the next morning. Kiegan started off by going to his company’s headquarters, taking up six floors of an office building in downtown Manhattan. I decided to come; I was curious about the other side of Kiegan’s business, the part that he admitted to me made a ton of money.

“I just like being a reality TV star because it pisses off the family,” he told me with a grin when we were on the plane. “I mean sure, I make some money off it, and the value of my brand can’t be discounted, but I know my father hates it, and that’s what drives me to keep doing it. The entire Hunt family thinks it soils the name. Plus, with my Uncle Ed running for President, now the last thing he wants is for his cousin to end up on the news for his dumb TV show. I had like eight phone calls from Washington the morning the news about the club broke.”

“Wait, your Uncle Edward is running for President?” I asked, my face blanching.

“Yeah, why?”

“No, no reason. I just didn’t realize.” Bringing up the memories of Kiegan’s family made me feel sick to my stomach.

“He announced it yesterday. I never thought the day would come when I was more up to date on current events than my little sis,” he joked, and I stuck my tongue out at him.

“Sorry I was too busy re-scheduling your life, seeing as you ruined the production schedule for your dumb TV show,” I retorted.

Now we were “where the magic happens”, according to Kiegan. Hordes of people worked at desks, the space was pretty liberal, and the whole place was decorated in bright colours. It was much like what I would have imagined the headquarters at Google or Apple to look like.

We strode past the whole floor of ringing phones and frantic hand gestures and towards an office at the back. Kiegan’s office. For a guy who was there so little, he sure had a whole bunch of space for himself. I mean, I guess you can do that when you’re the head of the company.

I sat down on a couch near the entrance to the room and checked my messages while Kiegan opened up a laptop and started working.

“You didn’t need to come here, you know,” he told me as he looked at me trying to balance a notepad on my leg.

“I wanted to see where your “real business” happens,” I replied. I knew I could leave whenever I wanted to, but I had been curious about his other company.

“Fair enough. I’m going to be here for a while, wanna order some lunch?”

“Sure. What are you in the mood for?”

“Whatever. But here’s a stack of menus from the best places near here,” he told me, opening a drawer and handing me a pile of take out brochures.

“Chinese?”

“Sounds good.”

I hadn’t had good Chinese food in a long time, so when I paid the delivery guy and the smell of sweet and sour pork and fried rice wafted up from the cardboard container inside the plastic bags, my stomach began to rumble.

I went over to Kiegan’s desk and we split up the order. I moved to the comfortable leather chair across the table from him and sat down. I supposed there was nothing else to do except… talk.

“So why did you leave the family, anyway?” Kiegan asked me. Right. Straight to the meat of it.

“I’m still not going to tell you. It’s private.”

“Suit yourself. I’ve told you why I left.”

“Yeah, well, that’s you. As you’ve already proven in the last few days, you’re a lot braver than I am.”

Kiegan shrugged. “Meh. Bravery comes in a lot of different forms.”

I glanced at him sideways. I’d given Kiegan the perfect opportunity to be a total douche to me, and he passed on it. What was going on?

“Well, I’m still not going to tell you why I left.”

“Fine. Suit yourself. Why Seattle, though?”

“I figured if I was going to go as far away from the Hunt family as possible, my best options were the west coast. California I always thought was pretty expensive, so then it became a coin toss between Seattle and Portland.”

“What made Seattle win out?”

“Oh, it was a literal coin toss. Heads was Portland, tails was Seattle.”

Kiegan burst out laughing. “That’s awesome. What a great way to choose the next place to live.”

I shrugged. “Well, it seemed to make sense at the time. And it was good, when I had a job. Well, it was ok anyway. At least I wasn’t near the family.”

Kiegan nodded. “I know what you mean. I only moved to New York, but at least that was already far enough away to start breaking off ties with them.”

“Do you speak to them ever?”

Kiegan shook his head.

“No. And they stopped calling a while ago. I think they’ve given up on me.”

“On both of us, it seems. Though I was never really a part of the family.”

Kiegan glanced at me.

“No, you weren’t, were you?”

“Well it’s not like you helped make me feel welcome.”

Kiegan spread out his arms and grinned, a chow mein noodle falling off his fork and onto the hardwood floor that I assumed some poor cleaner would have to pick up later that night.

“You’re right. I was a bit of a dick.”

“A bit of a dick? You’re a
bit
of a dick now. I’ll grant you you’ve changed somewhat. But in high school you were the biggest dick.”

“Now I’ve just got the biggest dick,” came his reply, and my face instantly flushed.

“You know… we’re not… I’m not… that didn’t…”

“I know, I know, you’re pretending that never happened,” he replied with a laugh, digging into his Chinese container.

“Exactly.” I pretended to be super focused on getting exactly the right amount of fried rice onto my chopsticks.

“Look, I know I was a dick to you in high school, and I’m sorry. I guess a part of me didn’t want someone new in the family, so I figured I’d drive you away.”

“Thanks,” I replied. “So what’s your excuse for now?” I couldn’t resist the opening.

“Oh come on,” Kiegan laughed. “Now it’s just that I have a crush on you, and you’re so cute when you blush. But none of the stuff I’ve gotten you to do has been
that
bad.”