“Ty –”
“I love you, Lexie.”
My heart skipped and warmth flooded through me.
“Ty –”
His hand gave me a squeeze and he cut me off, whispering, “Love you, baby.”
His hand moved then, sifting then fisting in my hair, I lifted my head and he guided it to his mouth where he kissed me, hard, wet and very deep.
When he released my mouth, he didn’t release the hold on my hair and pressed in so my forehead touched his and I looked up close into his beautiful, curly-lashed eyes.
“You know,” I whispered, my hand sliding up his chest to wrap around the side of his neck, “I love you too.”
“On the move, rushin’, outta breath to cover me,” he repeated. “Yeah, babe, I know.”
I smiled at him.
Then, still whispering, I said, “I gotta go clean up.”
To that, his fist loosened in my hair but his big hand cupped the back of my head and pressed my face in his neck, I felt his jaw slide down my hair and in my ear, he murmured, “Don’t like losin’ your pussy.”
“Honey –”
“Let me keep it a minute.”
What could I do?
I did the only thing I could, not that it was a hardship, I gave in on an, “Okay.”
His arm around me gave me a squeeze and I rested against his big, solid warmth for awhile until his arm gave me another squeeze, lightly lifting me up and I got his message.
I kissed his neck, rolled off him and exited the bed. Then I went to the bathroom, cleaned up and wandered out to see Ty hadn’t moved except to pull the covers over his lower half. He was still in bed, back to the headboard, lights on at both nightstands, his eyes on me.
I moved to my panties, tugged them on then tagged his Team Walker t-shirt that I’d flung on the end of the bed with mine. I pulled it on and when I got my head and arms through and was yanking it down, I caught his eyes to see his lips twitch.
“So, will you wear it in town?” I asked.
“Mr. Humongo?” he asked back then shook his head, his lips tipping up. “No fuckin’ way.”
“Well, I’m wearing mine,” I muttered, putting a knee to the bed then crawling to him and throwing my leg over to sit astride him again.
I rested my hands on his chest. He shoved his up the back of the tee and they roamed but his eyes caught mine and his were now serious.
“No matter what Keaton said, you don’t trust him. You don’t trust anyone but the inner sanctum. Tate, Deke, Peña, Wood, Maggie, Laurie, Krystal, Bubba, Pop, Stella and Jim-Billy. Get me?”
Obviously, I’d told him everything.
I nodded.
“Not even Frank,” he went on.
I nodded again.
“Also not Dewey.”
I nodded yet again.
“Nobody,” he kept going.
“I get it, hubby,” I said, pressing my hands into his chest. “Nobody.”
“But maybe Sterling,” he amended on a mutter and I was thinking he was right.
I didn’t get my kickass celebration dinner. The celebration took its usual turn when our friends were around. Deke took off and brought back two cases of beer. Laurie got on the phone and Pop brought Jonas over and both stayed. Stella came with them. Krystal got on the phone and ordered pizzas. Wood popped by for a beer but didn’t stay long because Maggie was at home with the kids. Shambles’s cake was decimated but part of it being laid to waste was Ty eating a huge slice with ice cream so I didn’t mind. I managed to keep the champagne away from the impromptu partygoers but they weren’t really champagne people. Except, possibly, Sterling who stayed for the festivities but drank beer like all the rest.
Then, as they do, the men went out to the deck to huddle. Sterling went with them.
I would learn after they left and before Ty and I went up to bed to have the real celebration, that Tate was taking the money, gun, weapon paraphernalia and Misty’s letter. He had a scanner and was going to scan it and send it to Angel that night. He was also going to send it to other people. He was further going to make a shitload of copies of it, give Ty and I some but keep the original safe. And lastly, Ty had contacted his friend Max’s wife Nina, who was an attorney in Gnaw Bone, who was also on Tate’s e-mail list to receive a scanned copy. That said, she’d already been on the line to Colorado’s Attorney General’s office to discuss Ty’s case and how the letter shed new light on it and to get the ball rolling to uncover whatever else Misty had sent to whoever else she sent it to.
Although the Attorney General’s office assured her that they felt this was as serious as Nina Maxwell communicated to them it was and would be acting on it thus, that was as far as we got.
It would be nice to get a knock on the door in five minutes and go down to see the Governor there to grant Ty a full pardon with a thousand news reporters behind him ready to receive his statement that Tyrell Walker was a wronged man and Arnold Fuller was a racist, asshole, dirty cop dick but I doubted that would happen.
So I would take what we had since it was way better than what we had yesterday.
“Do you think Keaton is working with Frank?” I asked Ty.
“I think Keaton’s wife got shot and Keaton’s shook. He did not do me dirty except that he married Misty and was and is known to look the other way frequently and clearly he did it during my gig. How dirty he is, I have no idea but I do know you jump in the mud, it’s impossible to stay clean. And I know he jumped in the mud way before what went down with me. His seein’ the error of his ways now does not surprise me. But I wouldn’t trust him to change a light bulb.”
I nodded.
Then I pointed out, “Fuller, today, was arrogant. I don’t think he knows what Misty got up to or what Frank and possibly Keaton are currently up to.”
“Fuller has been a big fish in a small pond for a very long time. Fuller has convinced himself he’s untouchable and the long ride he’s had has helped him do that. He’s got shit on people, he’s got people in his pocket and he’s demonstrated that his retribution will be fierce if he’s crossed and not just with me and Misty but often and for decades. He’s not dumb as his boys but no man should suffer from hubris. Hubris is the worst thing a man can have because it makes you weak without you knowin’ you’re weak. Hubris has brought bigger, smarter, more powerful men to their knees. A man like him, it’ll destroy.”
“I hope so,” I whispered.
His hands stopped roaming and his arms wrapped around the middle of my back, pulling me close so my torso was plastered to his and our faces were an inch apart.
“Seein’ that man in my house I thought would rile me. Seein’ how he was, though, it was the first time I felt any real hope. All this shit goin’ down around him, even right in front of him, Gifford clearly hatin’ his guts, citizens there in his face that they were not scared or cowed and he still stood their proud, thinkin’ he had the upper hand. That isn’t smart. He’s blinded by his perceived power. It’s the wrong way to be.”
“But he… with Misty –”
“Misty was a speck of dust that he blew off. He cannot blow off the IA or the FBI or Tate Jackson. He’s got more powerful enemies than him and he doesn’t see it. Means his plays will be off.”
“I hope so,” I repeated on a whisper and got a strong squeeze of my man’s arms.
“Team Walker is in the home stretch, mama,” Ty whispered back, I sighed, he smiled then he ordered, “Get off me, baby, we don’t know what tomorrow’ll bring. We need to sleep.”
I nodded, touched my mouth to his and rolled off.
He turned his light off and slid into bed. I turned off mine and rolled back to curl into him.
I fell asleep tucked to his side. As usual, what seemed like moments later, I was on my other side and felt my husband leave the bed. He was never gone long and this time was no different. Then he was back and curving his long body into mine.
I snuggled back into him, doing it deep and fell back to sleep.
Chapter Eighteen
Christmas Comes Early
Ty
Lying on his back on the couch, Ty heard his wife’s heels on the floor then he heard them disappear and he moved his eyes from the game to over the back of couch because he knew her feet hit rug.
When he saw her he didn’t know whether to grin, frown or get up, grab her, throw her on the couch and fuck her hard and quick before their company came.
This was because she’d just come from being upstairs for an hour, she was tricked out and she looked good. Another sundress, this one black, clingy t-shirt material, tank in the front with straps that crossed at her back, exposing a good deal of skin and a long expanse of her legs were also on view because the skirt wasn’t short but it was short. She had on a pair of spike-heeled, ash-colored sandals with an abundance of criss-crossed thin straps, so many they nearly covered her foot, rode up her ankle and the shoes had to zip up the back. And last, she had on big silver earrings and so many silver bracelets on one wrist, he could hear them jingle even over the commentators on television.
He hadn’t seen the dress before… or the shoes. His woman had a lot of clothes and shoes so it could be she’d dug something out of the closet. Then again, one night after work that week, she’d gone with Laurie and her friend Wendy to the mall, she’d come back after Ty was home from the gym and she’d done it carrying numerous bags. He’d been on the phone so he didn’t pay much attention but the next day he got home from work, he saw two more frames on the mantel, one holding a photo Laurie took of Ty and Lexie with her family at Maggie’s barbeque and another of Ty and Julius that Lexie took on the deck the night after they had dinner at The Rooster.
But those frames did not take numerous bags to haul home and Ty was discovering the reality of something he already knew, his wife liked to spend money and it wasn’t just on frames. It was her discussion of painting rooms, making curtains, setting up a “reading area” in their bedroom and going so far as dragging his ass up to the office so she could show him a website where she picked out furniture for this “reading area” that he had to admit was the shit but he also saw the price tags so there was a reason it was the shit.
He made good money and they could have a good life even if she didn’t work. He didn’t just put the money he got from selling the Skyline down on the house but also earnings from a couple of games. Therefore, he bought every upgrade the new build came with and still the mortgage was low. But they had three vehicles, all of which had taxes, plates and insurance that were a bitch, not to mention their development was a nice one that attracted a certain income bracket not only because property values were high due to its seclusion and views but also because the HOA fees were near crippling. It made for nice, well-kept landscaping and meant the roads were cleared quickly when it snowed but it also was a monthly whack.
He knew his wife was setting up house, making a home for him and for her, something neither of them had ever had, settling them into a nest where they’d feel safe that was theirs together. He also knew she was acutely aware that his life had been interrupted and she was running to catch up so he wouldn’t walk into their home every day and be reminded of the time he lost.
And even after his outlays on informants, furniture and vehicles, he still had a fuckload of his earnings from Vegas and a healthy bank balance due to his overtime, but his woman was off the pill and if her parts worked and his did too, the amount of sex they had, she’d be knocked up soon and, as far as he knew, babies didn’t come with government checks to cover their upkeep for the first eighteen years.
Lexie was social and she loved her job because it allowed her to be social with every bitch in town. The pay, however, was shit. She essentially made spending money but not the way she spent.
Therefore, she had to slow down.
The problem with this was, he didn’t have the heart to tell her to do it mainly because she was right that morning after his mama came home. He wanted her to have her every heart’s desire, not just because he had to make up to her what he’d done, just because he wanted to give her that.
So Ty had a decision to make. Suck it up and continue to work overtime so he could give his woman her every heart’s desire or have a chat with his wife.
He was also uncertain how to respond to her appearance because he knew with it and the huge-ass grocery shop she did yesterday as well as the massive bouquet of pink and ivory roses that was in the vase on the dining table and the banging around she’d been doing in the kitchen all morning that made the house smell like brownies (first) then garlic, that she was going all out for their afternoon visitor.
And Ty didn’t know how to feel about that.
Because their afternoon visitor was his father.
It was Sunday after their drama-filled Monday and Ty’s phone rang on Wednesday morning at nine o’clock sharp.
Irving Walker had taken a day and a half to think about it, pull up the courage and he was on the line asking Ty hesitantly how he was doing and even more hesitantly if he wanted to meet for a drink.
Ty had flat out said no.
“If I’m gonna be around you, you’re not gonna be around booze,” he told his Dad.
“I can do that,” his father replied quickly.
Too quickly.
Ty didn’t like it. Before he was sent down he had little to do with his parents and what he did have to do with them, he didn’t do it. His mother frequently showed to ask for money and his father infrequently showed drunk off his ass to bitch about his mother.
While he was involved in his shit storm, however, they had completely disappeared. After he went down, a couple of years in the joint, his father started writing. Ty hadn’t read his letters. He also didn’t save them. After he received five in the same amount of months and returned zero, they stopped coming.
“You wanna explain the recent love you and Mom been showin’?” Ty asked.
“Ty –” Irving Walker started.
“If you can call it love,” Ty cut him off to say. “Got a wife, a good one. She loves me, she’s got my back. Her people show, meet me for the first time, find out my recent history, they’re laughing and drinkin’ cocktails in my kitchen within ten minutes. My parents show, in five minutes Lex is so pissed, she’s throwin’ sass and then she’s on the phone with me ranting. Like I said, I got a wife, a good one who loves me which means I love her and can’t say I’m particularly thrilled about the fact that my parents piss her off and set her ranting. I try to shield her from that shit, not have it show up in my driveway.”
“You know your Ma,” Irv told him.
“Yeah, and I know you. Lex told me you weren’t smashed. A miracle.”
His verbal bullet hit true and he knew it when Irv spoke.
“Ty,” pause then, quietly, “son.”
Ty waited. That was all he got. It was more than he ever got before but it was not enough.
So he went on, “I’ll tell you, not because you deserve to know but because, you can pull your shit together to be a better fuckin’ grandfather than you were a father, then I’ll want my kid to have that because you’re the only shot my kid’ll have at a grandfather and you can take from that that Lexie and I are tryin’. But this love you and Mom are showin’ does not end with me handin’ cash over so she can blow it on smokes and you can drink it.”
Irv was quiet a moment and it was a long moment.
Then he said softly but with feeling that trembled in his voice, “Burned in me, what was done to you.”
It was Ty then that was quiet.
Irv kept talking. “Burned in me over five years.”
Ty still didn’t respond.
Irv finished it and he did it on a whisper. “I can be a better grandfather.”
Ty sucked in breath. Then he said, “All right, Dad. I’ll talk to Lexie, see if she’s comfortable with you bein’ in our house. I know one thing though, Mom doesn’t show. I’m protective of my wife, she’s protective of me and I do not want Mom
rilin’ her up and she will just by showin’ her face. Lexie’s still pissed and unless Mom gets her head outta her ass, Lexie won’t get unpissed. She knows what was done to me and she’s sensitive to anything that might get at me. Keep Mom away.”
“It’ll be just me,” Irv assured him quickly.
“I’ll talk to Lexie, let you know.”
“You… you,” he said, still talking quickly then he paused then, “You done good with her son. She’s not hard to look at but that’s not what I mean. She… she…” another pause, then quietly, “It’s good you got one with sass. Back then… years ago… Reece… your Ma,” another pause then, “Way people were, the way they were knowin’ she was with me, her folks, anyone… shit they said, way they looked at her… at us…” Ty heard him blow out a sigh. “She couldn’t take it.”
Ty stood still and stunned.
Christ, thirty-six fucking years and his father was sharing.
What the fuck?
Irv continued, “She got pissed at me ‘cause there were too many a’ them to get pissed at. Even your Ma, way she is, doesn’t have enough vinegar to sustain bein’ pissed at the world so she focused. Shoulda let her go, let her be but felt I owed it to her since I knocked her up and fucked up her life.”
“You wear a full body coverall when you were datin’ her?” Ty asked.
“What?” Irv asked back.
“Dad, she made her choice, you didn’t make her make it. She couldn’t live with it, that’s on her. You didn’t owe her shit, not puttin’ up with her anger for-fuckin’-ever, not dealin’ with her shit by poisoning your body, not makin’ your sons put up with it.”
“It was gone by the time you could process it, son, but loved her once and she loved me. She got bitter and wears it on her face but back then… you hooked yourself a beauty, Ty, but back then your Mom was nothin’ to sneeze at and, I know you won’t believe it, not now, but she was funny, shit, boy, made me laugh so damned hard, thought I’d bust a gut anytime I was with her.”
Ty stared unseeing out of the door of the garage, hearing this information, shit he did not know, shit he could barely believe that was still, fuck him, shit that was good to hear and he replied, “Spent five years learnin’ a lot, most especially that every breath is worth something. So, I won’t piss this away and not tell you I don’t appreciate, no matter how late it is, you sharin’ with me. But I’ll point out, it’s still fuckin’ late. I rotted for five years –”