What he saw instantly made his entire body grow tense.
She was talking to a man in a way that she held her expressive frame in a posture of detachment. Her head turned to the side and he saw her profile was guarded.
He then saw Gemini swoop in and put a hand on the small of her back, saying something to the man even as he guided Greta to the curtains.
She disappeared through.
The man stared at the curtains even after they’d closed behind her.
Gemini positioned himself to the side of them, providing presence and making a point.
The man moved back to a table.
Hix watched him and he watched how his gaze fixed on a stage that didn’t have a soul on it.
At that point, Hix ordered another beer.
And settled in.
This time Hix’s attention being on the man at the table at the edge of it, he found when Greta returned to the stage that his instincts, as usual, weren’t wrong.
He’d been so caught up in Greta, he hadn’t noticed.
Now, he noticed.
So he did not leave a couple of songs into her set.
He didn’t leave at all.
Ten-Four
Hixon
AFTER GRETA’S FINAL set (which had been the second one he saw), Hix waited outside in the big graveled area around the Dew, his back to his Bronco, shoulders leaning against it, arms crossed on his chest, while the patrons drove away.
He was not alone.
One of Gemini’s men stood outside the front door, eyes to the lot, manner alert.
Hix still didn’t move.
The cars thinned until Hix figured the ones left were staff, Gemini’s . . .
And Greta’s.
Except a Mercedes sedan that Hix could see the head of the man in the driver’s seat, the back of the car to him, undoubtedly his eyes on Hix through the rearview mirror.
So yeah.
Hix didn’t move.
What he did was see Gemini come out and stand in the front door next to his man. Gemini’s eyes went from Hix to the Mercedes back to Hix. It then seemed he took his time coming to a decision.
When he came to it, he strolled to Hix at the back of his Bronco.
“Hix,” he greeted when he stopped a couple of feet away.
“Gemini,” Hix replied.
“With respect to you, just to say, we take care of things like this ourselves at the Dew.”
He took the respect but he still didn’t feel real great about the rest of what Gemini had to say.
“Things like this happen frequently?” Hix asked.
“No. But it’s a club. And since she came to us, I’m thinkin’ you get more than most that Greta is Greta.”
Oh, he got that.
“We haven’t had problems,” Gemini continued. “But we’ve had to make things clear on an occasion or two.”
Right.
“I’ll see her home,” he announced.
“Hix, my man, she’ll be good and he won’t be back.”
“I’ll see her home.”
They locked eyes.
They did this awhile.
Hix broke it, jerking his head toward the car. “He been here before?”
Gemini turned to the side to swing his gaze also toward the car.
Asshole knew he had company and was still goddamned sitting there.
Gemini swung his attention back to Hix.
“He was a regular even before Greta. She showed, got the vibe immediately, though it was contained.” He paused before he gave Hix what was needed. “Vibe changed last Saturday. You didn’t know it was fizzling, caught up in other things you didn’t catch it when the change came. But I did. So he’s showed tonight, made his approach, it tweaked Greta, he won’t be back.”
“Man’s got some balls, you out here, your man right there, me out here, sittin’ in his car makin’ plain his intentions. You know who he is?”
“I know he won’t be back and I know Greta will be good.”
“I know that last part too.”
They did battle with their eyes again, and it was Hix who broke it again.
“You take him. I’ll take her. I’ll also take a phone call on Monday, you lettin’ me know all’s good.”
With a sigh, Gemini said, “And I’ll take that deal.”
“Either I go back in or I want one of your men walkin’ her out here. Sayin’ that, I’d rather stay right where I am and have one of your men walk her out here. He’s makin’ it clear he’s ignoring our message, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t keep coming.”
“I see that play,” Gemini murmured. “She’ll be escorted to you. I gotta make arrangements to get her car back to her again?”
So Gemini took care of Greta’s car last Sunday.
“I’ll follow her home.”
Gemini nodded and apparently that was that.
He said not another word before he moved back to the front door of the club.
Staffers hit their cars and took off.
No one approached the man in his car.
This communicated to Hix that whatever Gemini did to “take care of shit like this” he didn’t want the sheriff watching.
That didn’t make him all that comfortable, but he couldn’t focus on that then.
This was due to the fact that a big, black man came out, his hand on Greta’s arm.
She still had on her dress, her heels, and he reckoned her car was not the Navigator left in the lot, or the Camaro, the Charger or the Lexus.
It was the blue Jeep Cherokee.
The man didn’t lead her to the Cherokee.
He led her to Hix.
And she made it plain from top to toe this didn’t make her happy.
So not happy, she only shot a glare at the man who dropped his hand from her arm when he stopped her at Hix. She didn’t express gratitude or say good-bye as he turned without a word himself and walked back to the club.
“Another smoke signal I missed?” she asked irritably.
“Man in the car over there is an admirer. So I’m walkin’ you to yours then I’m followin’ you home then I’m makin’ sure you’re locked in safe and sound.”
Dread chased the annoyance from her face as she looked toward the car.
Yeah, she’d read the guy and what she’d read had tweaked her.
“God, totally knew that guy was a creep.”
“You get a lot of creeps?” he asked, but he suspected he knew.
For a woman like Greta, a man could turn creep real easy he had even an inkling of that in him.
“I don’t know,” she murmured, slowly shifting her gaze back to Hix. “If Gemini reads it, he takes care of it and doesn’t share.”
He felt his mouth get tight. “That’s not doing you any favors, Greta. You should know when you gotta keep your eyes open.”
“I do that all the time anyway, Gemini knows that,” she replied. “So I reckon he just doesn’t want me freaked.”
Hix couldn’t fault that at the same time he could.
But it was late. She was probably tired and he had kids sleeping under his roof. Now was not the time for that debate.
“You the Cherokee?” he asked.
She nodded.
He moved, pushing from the Bronco, dropping his arms and taking her elbow.
He walked her there and stood beside her as she opened the door and folded in.
She did that thing only some women do, not putting one foot then the other in the car, instead aiming her ass at the seat, pulling herself up and lifting both legs in like a lady.
Christ, everything about her called straight to his dick.
She looked up at him.
He issued orders.
“You can reverse out, but don’t start on your way until my headlights are behind you. Phone out of your bag, on the seat, in reach. Your car probably locks automatically. Don’t care. Lock it manually. You with me?”
She nodded but asked, “Do you think he’s that much of a
creep?”
“I think I don’t wanna find out, but you’ll want that less.”
“Right,” she mumbled.
“Curious,” he continued. “Gemini have someone escort you to the car after every gig?”
She nodded.
He nodded back. “Good. Now after every gig, you lock your doors immediately and ride home with your phone like that. Then you walk to the door of your house with your phone in your hand.”
“You’re creeping me out, Hixon,” she shared.
“It’s after two in the morning, you’re a woman alone, and if you don’t get me, I’ll give you a copy of In Cold Blood.”
Her eyes got big but her lips muttered, “I’ve read it, message received, say no more.”
He grinned at her and waited until she opened her bag, got out her phone, put the bag on the seat beside her with the phone on top, all of this she did with her door open.
When she went for her seatbelt, he closed her door and moved purposefully slowly to his truck.
He swung in, watching her Cherokee move in the lot through windows and mirrors as he belted up, started up, circled in the now-open lot and got up on her tail where she was idling.
She drove and he followed.
When they made it to her house, she slid up the drive to the side and stopped in front of the big detached garage that sat at the back.
Unlike the Saturday before, when he’d parked at the curb, he drove up the driveway right behind her.
He got out with eyes to her, watching her come out unlike she gone in.
One heel attached to a shapely leg down then the other, and she was out.
He pulled in a breath as he moved to her.
She closed her door, beeped the locks and let him take her elbow as they moved to the side door he figured led to her kitchen.
She opened the screen door she’d already put the storm windows in even though they were in Indian summer. She unlocked the kitchen door, moving through, switching on the lights.
Hix followed her.
He had not paid any mind to her house the last time he was there. This mostly because he kissed her the minute she’d let him in the front door, and he kept doing it as they made their way up to her bedroom. He hadn’t had it in him to take anything in on the way out.
But right then, he saw the kitchen he was expecting in that house, but not a kitchen he would expect of her.
Totally redone but still looking old, the green of the cabinets and center island was a shade of soft mint. The countertops all butcher block. Drop porcelain farmer’s sink. Flagstone floors. Long, spiked, old-fashioned brass hinges on cupboards, brass cup grips on the drawers, simple brass handles on the cabinets.
She had plants decorating the space here and there. Modest but decorative wreaths arranged nicely on the walls. Bright pottery on shelves. Some wicker. Pots and utensils on display on hooks. And oddly, but it looked good, a little lamp with a tall, thin base on the edge of a counter.
The high windows over the sink would make it sunny, but to give privacy, sheer white shades were down, starting a ways from the top so nothing obstructed the sun there, even sheers.
It was a country kitchen in a home in a sleepy county in Nebraska, and she looked like she belonged nowhere near it in that red satin dress, those shoes, her bling, with her hair arranged like that at her nape.
“You redo this?” he asked after he’d looked around.
“Old owners. This, the porch and the bathrooms did it for me,” she answered.
He verbalized his thoughts. “You in that dress don’t seem to belong here.”
She studied her surroundings like she’d never seen them before.
Still in her perusal, she murmured, “Funny, the minute I walked into this place, I knew I didn’t belong anywhere else.”
That said something about her with all that was happening with Hix in that moment he couldn’t afford the headspace to decipher.
Without him telling his mouth to do it, Hix shared, “Last place I wanted to be from the minute I hit Glossop was here.”
Her attention came to him. “Where were you before?”
“Indy.”
Her pretty lips tipped up. “That’s not exactly cosmopolitan, Hixon.”
“More than here.”
“You got me on that,” she muttered and tilted her head. “Are you saying you miss the city?”
He twitched his shoulders. “Guess I like things complicated.”
“Yeah,” she whispered.
Shit.
She put a hand to her island, moving slow, tentative, like she didn’t know where it was or if her aim would hit it, and noted, “Gemini would have seen me home.”
“I know, he shared that with me.”
Just as slow, but not as tentative, she ran her teeth over her lower lip before she repeated with one addition, “Gemini would have seen me home, Hixon.”
That time, Hix didn’t reply.
“Taking care of your citizens, Sheriff?” she whispered.
He replied to that.
“No, Greta.”
He watched her chest move as her breathing escalated.
Then he watched as her lips parted to let more air in.
And finally, he watched her mouth move as she said quietly, “You need to go.”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t move.
She didn’t move.
She just stood there in that damned dress and those damned shoes with all that great freaking hair around her beautiful face and breathed.
“This isn’t smart,” she whispered.
She was totally right.
He said nothing.
“We’re gonna do it anyway, aren’t we?” she asked.
He looked into her eyes and knew it was not at all smart.
But they were going to do it anyway.
“Yeah,” he whispered.
She took in a big breath and her chest heaved with it, the fullness at the insides of her breasts exposed at the vee of her dress pushing against the material.
She took in another.
And then with a low noise that came from deep in her throat that he felt score straight to his cock, she took the first step, the second, third, and she was in his arms.
She did that, came to him. It was him that dropped his head and his lips bore down on hers.
Hers opened. He swept his tongue in and instantly pivoted her, walking her backwards toward the hall door.
And the stairs.
He had her zipper down in the hall.
She had his shirt untucked at the foot of the stairs.
He had her dress down to her waist by the middle of them.
She had his belt undone by the top.
All this they did with their mouths attached, tongues dancing.
He shimmied the dress over her hips at the side of her bed while she fumbled with the buttons of his shirt.
Her dress had fallen to her feet and she’d gotten enough buttons undone he could slip the ones through at his cuffs and tear it over his head. He did this as he toed off his shoes.
The second he dropped his shirt, his hands went to her ass, lifted her up and her legs circled him. Hix put a knee to her bed and then both of them in it.
He kissed her and took the kiss deeper, made it last, and only disengaged to bend down to pull off his socks.
He only got that done before she reached to him and tugged him back to her.
He didn’t fight it.
Hands all over her, everywhere he could get them, he whispered in her ear, “You got another condom?”
Her hands diving in his trousers and shorts, skin to skin at his ass, in his ear she whispered her answer. “One left, Hix. But, baby, as hot as you are, take this sister’s advice and slide some in your wallet.”
His mouth went back to hers, his eyes looking in hers, seeing them sparkle even through the shadows.
“Thanks for the advice,” he said, his smiling mouth moving against her also smiling mouth.
She nipped his bottom lip telling him she was done chatting.
He got her message and kissed her again.
Just like when she was fully clothed, something he didn’t comprehend the last time he’d had her, when she was in bed, Greta communicated with everything she had. The sounds she made. Her movements. Arches. Stretches. Touches. Tastes. Nibbles. Scrapes. Squeezes.
It was all too good, sweet, hot, wet, he had to escape before it went out of his control.
And he did that making his way from working her breasts over her lacy bra, down her belly to between her legs.
He gently opened them.
“Hix,” she whispered.
He put his mouth to her over her panties and then he put pressure on by pressing in his tongue.
“Hix,” she moaned, her fingers diving into his hair.
Right.
With that, he was not going to take this slow.
So he rolled away, dragged her panties down her legs, his cock jumping when they caught at one ankle on the bling of the shoe she was still wearing, and as he rolled back, she opened herself to him.
Jesus.
Shit.
He lowered to her, and with just a touch of his mouth, she pitched up into him and filled it.
He did not let that invitation slide.
Tossing her legs over his shoulders, he ate her, his hips uncontrollably grinding his cock into her mattress at the sounds she made, the taste of her on his tongue, the wet seeping into his mouth, the feel of her legs tightening around him, the points of her heels digging into his flesh.
He took from her and more and more until her hand fisted in his hair and she gasped, “Condom.”
He turned his head, ran his lips along her thigh and murmured, “Not done, sweetheart.”
Then he went back at her.
Jesus, so damned sweet, her fist in his hair shoved him deeper even as it seemed she wanted to pull him away, and she squirmed under him, pumping against him at the same time evading, until she forced out, “This . . . I’m . . . baby.”
She was on the edge.
Only then did he lift up and over her, catching her eyes, hers focusing on his with difficulty.
“Condom,” he growled.
She rolled to her side immediately, reached and opened a drawer in her nightstand.
He pushed up to his knees between her legs and practically tore the packet out of her hand when she rolled back.