Mystery Man

  I was mentally preparing for the Ginger discussion by shoveling lasagna in my mouth when Meredith asked, “So, how did you two meet?”

  I choked on hot lasagna and my eyes flew across the table to Hawk.

  Hawk’s dimples popped out.

  I frantically chewed in hopes I could speak before Hawk said something that might make my head explode or worse, my parents’ and as I did this Hawk’s brows went up in a clear challenge.

  Meredith spoke into the void. “Was it romantic? I bet it was romantic.”

  Meredith would bet that. Except for Ginger coloring her world gray every once in a while, Meredith’s world was rose-hued. This had a lot to do with Meredith being Meredith, rarely having a bad day and always looking on the bright side of life.

  This also had a lot to do with the fact that Meredith was and always would be head over heels in love with my father. She’d met the man of her dreams and she knew it the instant she saw him. That was why she fainted about two seconds later. And her fainting was why Dad caught her. She woke up cradled in his arms, her ass in his lap while he gently stroked her hair out of her face and looked down at her like a prince would gaze upon his newly revived princess.

  I knew this because I was there when it happened, it made my toes curl then and, anytime I recalled it, it still made my toes curl. It was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen and we were in a fast food burger joint.

  Hawk and my meeting was nothing like that.

  But Meredith would want it to be that way, not for her, for me, and I loved her more than life so, when I swallowed, as stupid and embarrassing as it was going to be, I gave her what she wanted.

  And what I gave her, incidentally, was also the truth.

  With my eyes glued to her, my heart racing and my mind trying to pretend Hawk wasn’t there, I said, “When Tracy was working at Club, and screwing up the drinks all the time and breaking all the glasses, I was there one night because she needed moral support. I was drinking at the bar and suddenly I felt something strange, like I knew something big was about to happen. Then I looked at the door and I did it the minute Hawk walked in. I saw him and I knew what that big thing was because I thought right away, ‘That’s the man for me, that man is the perfect man for me. If I could choose any man in the world, it would be that man I would choose for me.’ Then I drank at the bar while Hawk ate dinner and I tried to get his attention and failed. So when he got ready to leave, it hurt because I didn’t want him to leave without him leaving with me. But he didn’t leave without me. He came up, put his hand on my back and talked to me. And when I felt his hand at my back and turned to see him standing close, I felt like every wish I’d ever wished was granted.” Meredith was staring at me, lips parted, eyes bright and I finished, “So that’s how we met.”

  Meredith’s eyes were bright because they were filling with tears, she kept staring at me then she sucked in breath, she looked down the table at Dad then back at me.

  “That’s sweet,” she whispered.

  Dad cleared his throat.

  I looked down at my plate and forked into my salad. I tried, I really did, to keep my eyes to my plate but even though I managed to keep my head bowed, my eyes lifted and I glanced at Hawk.

  The minute I did, my eyes dropped back to my plate but my breath came out of me in a whoosh and the look on his face, even catching only a glimpse of it, was burned on my brain in a way I knew the scar of that burn would live there forever.

  This was because when I looked at him Hawk didn’t look like Hawk or not the man I was growing to learn was Hawk.

  Hawk looked like the Hawk of my daydreams. His face was gentle but his eyes were intense, heated and I felt them burning into me even then as I shoved salad into my mouth and looked anywhere but him.

  “So… um… Hawk,” Dad said into the silence, “did you see any action when you served?”

  I heard Hawk’s deep voice answer but I had decided to concentrate on shoveling food in my mouth, chewing and swallowing without getting tomato sauce on my tee, lettuce stuck in my teeth or strangling on an unchewed bite of garlic bread so, even though I wanted to know Hawk’s answer, I didn’t listen.

  As if sensing my mood, Meredith quietly engaged me in conversation about the books I was editing while Dad and Hawk bonded over Army stories. Lucky for me, this took us to the end of dinner, which didn’t last long and also didn’t include me explaining things about Ginger.

  Meredith was apologizing for not having made any dessert when we all stood and Hawk announced dinner tasted great but he had “shit to do”.

  Then his eyes cut to me. “Babe, walk me to my car.”

  I didn’t know if this was an order or a request and I really, really wanted to run to a closet and barricade myself in it because after I told that story, I really, really didn’t want to be alone with Hawk. But I couldn’t do that with Dad and Meredith watching so I nodded.

  Farewells, thank yous and come agains were called as Hawk and I moved to the door. Then we were through it. Then the door closed firmly behind us, the latch making a definitive noise, Dad’s way of giving Hawk privacy, telling him he and Meredith were going to let Hawk and me walk to the car without spectators when I knew Dad and Meredith were so going to watch through the curtains (or at least Meredith was). But at this point I didn’t care. At this point I felt so self-conscious it was a burn emanating from deep inside me as another burn, the one in my brain, the one that carried that look I saw on his face, made its presence felt.

  Therefore, I had no reaction when Hawk took my hand and walked me down my parents’ walk to his Camaro and I had no reaction when he used my hand to position me with my back to his car and I also had no reaction when he pinned me in with his big body and his hands settled on either side of my neck. I didn’t even have a reaction when his thumbs put gentle pressure on the undersides of my jaw and forced me to look up at him.

  In the cold, February dark of a Colorado evening, I saw his black eyes lit by streetlamps and finally had a reaction. And that reaction was to instigate avoidance tactics without delay. And the avoidance tactics I decided on were picking a fight.

  “I didn’t tell them about Ginger,” I stated hurriedly. “I need to set up my laptop and get in a few hours of work but because I didn’t do it at dinner, now I have to go in there and explain things about Ginger. That’s gonna suck. I had it all planned out. I was all psyched up. Now I’ve totally lost my mojo because of you. You ruined my plan by showing up.”

  Clearly not feeling like fighting, Hawk took no umbrage and his thumb swept the curve of my jaw as he replied, “I briefed your Dad before dinner. You can go in and get right to work.”

  I blinked up at him. “You briefed Dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you say?”

  Hawk answered an answer that was far from complete, “He knows more than you, you know more than your stepmom.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That means your stepmom doesn’t need to know the shit swirling around your sister, or at least she’s not gonna hear it from me. You already know too much and aren’t gonna know any more. Your father needs to know it all so I told him and he agrees with me about you and your stepmom.”

  I didn’t know where to start so I started in the middle.

  “You told Dad everything?”

  “He asked questions, I answered, so… yeah.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. What I was sure about was that I couldn’t turn back time so I had to let it go.

  “How was he?”

  His thumbs went away from my jaws as his hands slid down to rest where my neck met my shoulders.

  “Not happy but not surprised,” he answered.

  I knew how Dad felt because I felt the same way.

  “How did you keep this from Meredith?”

  “She was cookin’, I asked for some time, your Dad took me into his den and I closed the doors. We got out and she didn’t ask. Their conversation, if they have one
, can be private. She’s his woman, that’s his call.”

  I had no verbal response to this but I felt gratitude. Hawk was right, Dad would want to know and he wouldn’t be happy not knowing. Hawk was also right, Meredith shouldn’t know unless Dad felt she could handle it and he should tell her himself.

  Even though I felt gratitude, I didn’t express it. Instead my eyes slid to the side.

  “Babe,” Hawk called when they did and my eyes slid back. “What you said earlier –”

  On no. We were not going to talk about earlier. I’d gladly walk barefoot on a bed of hot coals and at the end of that journey take a swan dive into the boiling lava at the mouth of a volcano before I talked about earlier.

  Therefore instantly I tried to jerk my neck away and move out from in front of him but he moved faster, pushing in closer, pinning me to the car and his hands came up to cup my jaws, forcing my face tipped to him.

  “Babe,” he repeated when my eyes stared at his ear.

  Guess I had to talk about it.

  “I was making it up,” I lied to his ear. “Meredith is a romantic. I couldn’t tell her how we really are. Not then with Dad there, not privately, not ever.”

  “Babe,” he said yet again.

  “It’s not a big deal or at least it isn’t now. When you disappear, it will be then. Meredith will be sad but I’ll handle it.”

  “Sweet Pea, look at me,” he ordered quietly.

  My eyes slid to his.

  “I asked to be seated in that booth,” he informed me and I sucked in breath at what he might be saying.

  Then I breathed it out on a, “What?”

  “Clocked you before you clocked me, Gwen.”

  I stared up at him, incapable of speech.

  “Saw you through the windows as I was walkin’ up. Your friend was with you and you were laughin’.”

  Oh my God.

  His head dipped closer and I watched as it did, holding my breath and feeling his eyes burning into mine.

  “Still see you,” he whispered.

  Oh my God!

  His thumb swept my cheekbone then his fingers went back into my hair as his other hand slid down my neck, over my shoulder and around my back, his head came down and he kissed me.

  This kiss was with tongue, lots of it, his and mine. It was wet, it was deep and it lasted a really long time.

  As usual I was holding on when he lifted his head and my body was quivering in places he could feel and in better places only I could feel and my private places were way better.

  “Get to work, Sweet Pea,” he murmured against my mouth, pulled me gently away from his car, bleeped the locks, opened the door, folded in, fired up the Camaro and purred away.

  I’d long since lost sight of his tail lights but I was still standing there, a residual quiver dying away, my mind stuck on one thought.

  He could still see me laughing.

  Chapter Nine

  Squishiness

  I felt the intense warmth of Hawk’s hand at the small of my back and my eyes opened. I’d been dead asleep and I felt confusion with a hint of excitement before his weight hit the bed and he turned me to him.

  Then his arms closed around me, pressed my body the length of his and my confusion cleared.

  I was in my parents’ house.

  Before the shadow of his descending head hit its intended target, my hand shot up and covered his mouth.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed through a whisper.

  His hand came up, fingers wrapping around my wrist and he pulled it away.

  “What do I always do?” he asked back, also whispering.

  “You broke in my parents’ house!” I was still whispering and hissing.

  “Yeah,” he replied like this was perfectly okay.

  “We can’t have sex when my parents are practically right next door!”

  He was silent, his body still, then he moved fast, his face disappearing in my neck as his arms got super tight and he rolled me to my back with his torso on mine and I heard his muffled laughter.

  “Hawk!” I snapped, my hands at his sleek-skin-over-hard-muscle bared shoulders, pushing back.

  His head came up and his weight came off me as he rested both forearms into the bed on either side of me.

  He looked at me through the shadows. “Babe, not gonna fuck you,” he murmured.

  “You just said, ‘what do I always do?’ And we always have sex,” I returned.

  “Yeah, babe, but it starts with a kiss.”

  Oh. This was true.

  I stared at his shadowed head through the dark. “Then what are you doing here?”

  “You’re here.”

  “So?” I prompted.

  One of his hands came to my face and I felt his fingers glide along my hairline before they moved into the hair at the side of my head.

  “Last night, someone targeted you and got close enough to you, he freaked you out. When that happened, my boys were eight minutes away and I was an hour away.”

  “You’re telling me something I know, Hawk.”

  “That’s not gonna happen again.”

  He had sounded amused, at first, then informative. His last sounded like a vow.

  My stomach got squishy.

  I resisted the squishiness and reminded him, “Dad’s right next door.”

  “He’s a man who can take care of himself and you, Sweet Pea, but there are people out there who don’t know that. They see my ride sitting at the curb, they’ll think twice before they fuck with anyone in this house.”

  Holy crap. He was protecting me. And Dad. And Meredith.

  Wow.

  “So you’re here just to um… be here?” I asked.

  “That and make sure you sleep.”

  Uh.

  Wow.

  It was getting harder and harder to battle the squishiness.

  He went on. “And get some sleep with you, I’m fuckin’ wiped.”

  Uh.

  Wow.

  SuperHawk, World’s Greatest Lover and Major Badass got wiped.

  Interesting.

  “Babe,” he called.

  My body jerked out of its amazement and I asked, “What?”

  “You gonna do that?”

  “What?”

  “Sleep.”

  No. No I was never going to get back to sleep. I’d got my second wind after standing in the cold when he left earlier and I’d managed to blow through a huge amount of work, staying awake and fresh until my concentration started waning around a quarter to midnight. I’d closed down and hit the sack feeling an exhaustion I knew would mean I’d sleep deep. The minute my head hit the pillow, I was out like a light.

  Now I was wide awake.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  His head dropped and he did something new, something he’d never done except in the lead up to something else. And that was to lightly kiss the indention at the base of my throat in the middle of my collarbone.

  Then he slid off me, turned me to my side, curved his body into mine, hitching one of my knees up with his so his heavy, warm thigh was resting on mine. His arm stayed tight around my belly, he leaned in and kissed the skin behind my ear then his head settled on the pillow.

  Guess Cabe Delgado didn’t verbalize his goodnight, he acted it out.

  Mm.

  I laid there in the warm curve of his body under his arm, feeling his breath on my neck thinking, Holy shit, MM is spooning me!

  Tracy would do cartwheels of pure joy for a mile if she knew this. Cam might have a heart attack.

  I didn’t know what to do except let the feeling my body was communicating to my brain penetrate and that feeling was, I really, really like this.

  My ex-husband Scott never spooned. I spooned his back but he never cuddled into me. Even after sex. He was a slam, bam, thank you ma’am type of guy. He took his orgasm, pulled out, rolled away, turned off the light and fell asleep.

  And he snored.

  He didn’t cuddle. He didn’t sweet ta
lk. He didn’t do any of that. Not even in the hopes of priming me for round two. With Scott, there was never a round two. This was, I would discover later, because by the time he had sex with me, he was too exhausted to do it again because he’d already had sex with someone else that day. Or two someone elses. Maybe even three, who knew, that was how much of a horndog he was.

  Hawk’s weight settled into me, his arm relaxed, his breathing evened and I knew he was asleep. Asleep spooning me.

  What did I do with this? How did I make us be over when I liked this? And what he said outside by his car. And the fact he didn’t like the thought that me or my family might be targeted and he did something about it.

  This was not a man who would crush Troy like a bug and boss me around. This was a man you’d make up in a daydream.

  And this was what filled my head until it drifted through my head until my body started to relax into Hawk’s and then I fell asleep.

  I could have been in dream world for awhile but it felt like seconds before I felt Hawk’s arm get so tight it nearly hurt, cutting off my breathing, my eyes opened and in that instant the heat of him was gone.

  I rolled, seeing his shadow by the bed, he was pulling on his cargos.

  I got up on an elbow and opened my mouth to say something when he moved again, his knee hit the bed, his finger rested lightly on my lips and I watched as his shadowy head shook in the negative once.

  Uh-oh.

  Then he was gone.

  About a nanosecond later I heard a scuffle, some exerted gasps then a hard, loud thump as if someone’s body hit the wall.

  Then I heard my sister Ginger’s unmistakable shriek, “What the fuck!”

  I threw back the covers and leaped from the bed, seeing the lights going on in the hall.

  “Ginger! Jesus!” I heard my Dad yell before I hit the hall to see Ginger pinned against the wall with Hawk’s hand in her chest, Hawk standing in cargoes with the top button undone, Dad in the hall wearing only pajama bottoms staring angrily at Ginger and Meredith joining late, like me, but unlike me she was wearing one of her long, lacy, satin negligees, what she always wore, even when I was a kid, though some of them were short, and I always thought she was quite, simply it because of her sexy nightwear.