Lady Luck (Colorado Mountain #3)(161)

I snuggled closer.

I wanted to ask where he went but I figured he’d tell me if he wanted me to know.

Then I fell back asleep.

And I was so exhausted by a day of celebration and an evening of more energetic celebration with my husband and me alone, I didn’t notice the AC wasn’t jacked up.

* * * * *

The next day…

4:15 p.m.

I drove through our development with Ty following me and my teeth clenched when I saw them hanging out, some cars but mostly vans with big aerials and dishes on top parked everywhere but in our drive. I hit the garage door opener with the timing I’d perfected from experience, knowing right when the signal caught so that I could roll up and not have to wait for the door to open and glide right in.

I usually glided right in. My journey right then was slowed by the reporters and cameramen converging on my baby just outside our drive and if one of them put a scratch in her, I was going to have to break my promise to Ty and lose my mind.

I kept my eyes straight and my car moved at a crawl, I hit driveway and they fell back but I couldn’t exactly gun it and screech in as much as I wanted to.

Nina had warned that, regardless of the fact that she had made a statement to reporters outside her office in Gnaw Bone yesterday afternoon after the Governor of California issued his apology and pardoned Ty, and she also made another one late this morning after Ty and I woke up to a media maelstrom right outside our house, they wouldn’t listen to her when she ended both saying, first, “This will be the only statement made on behalf of Mr. Tyrell Walker. Mr. Walker and his wife are relieved justice has finally been served and would now like to put this revolting episode behind them. They ask that you respect their wishes to move forward with their life in peace,” and at the end of the second statement, “As I said yesterday, Mr. Walker and his wife do not wish to speak to the media. I ask again on their behalf that you please allow them to put this grueling event behind so they can carry on with their rightful but delayed freedom to enjoy their future unimpeded by further upheaval.”

Obviously, they didn’t listen to her.

It was okay when we were at work and when I say that, I mean it was okay for Ty. Wood, Pop and three mechanics made it clear that the forecourt was private property and unless they were getting work done on their cars, they were not to leave the sidewalk. The garage was set back a whack from the street and had some outbuildings in front of it. So Ty worked in peace.

I didn’t even though Dominic called Daniel and Daniel, who had four inches and sixty pounds on his boyfriend and was also a serious mountain man, just a g*y one, informed the reporters they were not invited in the Spa. Luckily, the clients coming in that day found walking through a river of reporters shouting questions very exciting.

I did not. The constant buzz from outside and the shouted questions anytime a client came through the door were nerve-wracking and a total let-down from the jubilation of the day before. I was high on relief and belated justice and they were cutting into my happy trip which was super uncool.

Nina assured us this would go away, it would take awhile but it would and we just needed to stay quiet and be patient.

Ty informed me that we were doing what Nina said we were doing, exercising the freedom to enjoy our future unimpeded by further upheaval and that included me not losing control on my sass and throwing any at annoying reporters.

I was thinking that to do this, I needed to evacuate the state of Colorado. I figured both Wood and Dominic would not balk at Ty and I taking a vacation however I was only back at work for a few weeks and I couldn’t do that to Dominic after taking off on him once. Not even doing it to celebrate something as miraculous (albeit deserved) as what had happened to Ty or to escape the media onslaught.

So, it was put a clamp on my sass, something I promised my husband I would do.

Which was hard normally but now it was taking superhuman powers.

Ty glided the Snake in beside me and hit the garage door opener before he’d switched her off. I waited in my car and watched in the rearview mirror as the door fell, not getting out in order that they wouldn’t get a shot of me coming out of my car like they did when I walked into and out of the salon that day, both times escorted by my husband who left work that morning in order to drive up and trail me down then walk me into the salon and then who showed at the salon when we were both off in order to escort me out to the Charger and trail me home. We should have taken one car but he wanted to go to the gym after work, a plan thwarted when the news people didn’t go away all day.

As the door went down and settled, the shouts and cries of questions and requests for statements were drowned but not gone.

I got out, stood in my door and glared over the roof of the Charger at Ty as he folded out. He caught the look on my face, stopped dead and burst out laughing.

I didn’t find anything funny therefore I slammed my door and stomped out of the garage, into the utility room and up the steps.

I’d crashed my purse down on the side counter and was listening to Ty coming up the stairs when something caught my eye and I froze, staring out the backdoor.

“No f**king way!” I shouted.

“What?” Ty asked.

I lifted an arm, pointed at a wide but flat-ish cardboard box leaning against the glass at the backdoor, turned to my husband and proclaimed, “If that’s a box full of sick-ass sex tapes, I don’t wanna know.”