was telling him.
“We’ve been over this,” Ryan said absently with a bored sigh as he continued going over his release papers to make sure they were all in order.
“Tell him that,” Hunter said, narrowing his eyes on the large bastard that had infiltrated their lives. For the past three months, he’d had to deal with the asshole showing up for breakfast and manipulating an invite out of Kylie to movie night, dinners, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and all the shit in between and-
The asshole was actually helping her.
Kylie hadn’t wanted to do therapy, wasn’t ready for it, but Grey seemed to understand that so instead, he’d slowly won Kylie over. He started showing up early for Hunter’s mandatory therapy sessions and talked to Kylie about living in Florida, things they both missed from living up north, anything and everything except her family. From what he could tell, Grey never brought them up. That had eventually led to having Grey staying after sessions to hang out with Kylie to staying for dinner and eventually getting Kylie to start opening up to him.
Sometimes she asked Grey questions. Other times Grey just listened as she told him things, or he talked to her about whatever it was that normally had Kylie sitting by the pool late at night, lost in thought. He’d also started to get Kylie to venture out of the house more for something other than work, something that he hadn’t been able to do for her. Grey took her out for lunch, got her to go to the movies after a glaring match that Hunter ended by picking her up and putting her in the car, took her shopping, had her help decorate his house and office, and basically found a reason for Kylie to stop hiding.
When Ryan saw how much the outings took out of Kylie, he decided to help. Every week for the past two months he’d taken Kylie out for lunch, asked her to meet him for coffee, and hung out with her during Hunter’s therapy sessions. Almost overnight, both men had become extremely protective of her, greeting her with fond smiles, and going out of their way to spend time with her and Kylie…
Smiled more, was more relaxed, and happier than he’d ever seen her. She still struggled with what happened, but she never talked about it. Sometimes at night, he’d wake up to find her crying in her sleep. Other times, she looked so damn lost that he’d drop everything so that he could hold her. They never talked about her family, but he knew that she still struggled with everything they’d done to her. He saw it on her face whenever she caught a glimpse of her back in the mirror, when she hesitated opening an email, and the way she flinched whenever someone knocked on the door.
Her family had made one more fucked-up attempt to come after her, but he’d taken care of it. He’d had his marketing department in London handle all those fake reviews and had Ryan do what he did best. He’d canceled his old email account and opened a new one, which he’d made sure wasn’t public knowledge. He’d sent out a memo that the next time anyone made his private email public that they’d be looking for a new job. He also assigned the job of checking his emails to one of the assistants at the corporate office in Orlando.
He was doing whatever it took to keep her safe.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about something,” Ryan said, tossing the file that he’d been looking at on the patio table.
“What’s that?” Hunter asked, shifting his attention away from the beautiful woman who’d changed his life to find Ryan watching him curiously.
“I came across an article this morning about a family in Rhode Island,” Ryan said, pausing to take a sip of his root beer since he’d stopped drinking around Kylie when he’d noticed how much the scent bothered her.
“Sounds fascinating,” Hunter drawled, as he reached over and grabbed a bottle of water out of the bucket of ice that Kylie filled for them.
“It was. It really was, but what was interesting was that this family,” he said, pausing with a thoughtful look on his face, “let’s call them Smith. Well, apparently the Smith family is in a lot of trouble right now.”
“Oh, yeah?” Hunter asked absently, as he grabbed a pen off the table and began signing the stack of contracts that Ryan had brought with him for his approval.
“It