“You got broken into?” Troy repeated.
“Is that why all these guys are here?” Tracy asked, her head swiveling around on her neck to take in the commandos then she looked at me. “What are they doing? Are they building a fortress?”
“They’re putting in a security system,” Hawk answered, Tracy’s face instantly fell at this news and her eyes came to me.
“Oh honey, does that mean you won’t be able to get those Jimmy Choos you’ve had your eye on for, freaking, ever? You know, I can’t hold them very much longer. Someone will notice.”
That was Tracy: fashion before everything, even safety.
“She’s not payin’ for it,” Hawk replied, Tracy’s face instantly lit up again and her eyes flew back to Hawk while Troy’s eyes narrowed on him.
“Hurray!” Tracy exclaimed.
“Babe, stop saying ‘hurray’, this isn’t what it seems,” I finally got out and Hawk’s arm squeezed my shoulders.
“What is it then?” Troy asked me but didn’t wait for me to answer. “And who is this guy? And who broke in? Are you okay? Did you get hurt? Do the police know? Did they catch him?”
I opened my mouth to answer but Hawk answered before me and for me.
“Like I said, I’m Hawk, Gwen’s man. We don’t know who broke in. Gwen’s fine, my boys and I are lookin’ out for her and the police have been informed.”
“Hawk,” Tracy breathed, gazing up at him with stars in her eyes. “Cool name. Way cool. Super cool. Super, double extra cool.”
Good God.
“Honey, you need a brief but I don’t have time, I have work,” I told her and looked at Troy. “And I’m sorry, Troy, I can see you’re concerned but things are a little crazy and I have deadlines. I can’t do my Troy Day today. But I’m fine, totally fine. I’ll call you and explain everything tomorrow.” Then I looked at Hawk and snapped, “And you. Will you quit speaking for me?”
“That’s cool,” Tracy said immediately before Hawk could reply and went on. “And by the way, honey, your hair is the bomb.”
Troy wasn’t cool. He was staring at me. Then he asked, “Does this have to do with Ginger?”
When he asked that, Tracy’s eyes swung to me and they were wide.
“Ohmigod,” she breathed. “I didn’t think of that.”
Troy didn’t wait for my answer; he jumped straight to the right conclusion. He’d known me a long time but my escapades, even at their worst, wouldn’t lead to a team of commandos installing a security system.
“What’d she do?” Troy asked.
“I don’t know and I don’t care. I’ve disowned her,” I answered.
“Finally,” Tracy muttered.
“I want to know and I care if it means, in a day, you’ve found and hooked up with Rambo,” Troy clipped, jerking his head at Hawk.
Hawk did that deep, manly, amused chuckle.
Tracy missed the chuckle because she was declaring, “It wasn’t a day. They’ve been seeing each other for a year and a half.”
Uh-oh.
Tracy saw the look on Troy’s face, realized what she’d done and said my thought out loud, “Uh-oh.”
“A year and a half,” Troy whispered and my stomach lurched. He looked like I’d kicked him and not in a good place.
Shit, Hawk was right. Troy definitely wanted to get in my pants.
“Troy –” I whispered back and Hawk spoke.
“Friendly advice. Next time, get your head outta your ass and stake your claim.”
My body went solid but it still turned woodenly toward Hawk and I snapped loudly, “Hawk!”
Hawk looked down at me. “Man to man, babe, he’s a man, he can take it and he’s gotta know he fucked up.”
For the first time in my life I was wishing murder wasn’t illegal.
“I can see you’re not in the mood for an intervention,” Tracy said softly to Troy, “but, um… he’s kind of right, honey.”
This time, my mouth dropped open as I stared at my sweet, wouldn’t-do-or-say-a-thing-to-hurt-a-soul Tracy saying something that hurt a soul.
And Troy looked at her just like I’d figure someone would look whose soul was just wounded.
Then he jerked around and started to go.
I pulled away from Hawk, rushed forward and grabbed his hand, saying, “Troy –”
He stopped and shook his hand free, his eyes narrowed on me. “Don’t,” he whispered.
“Troy –” I started, again.
“You need a washer changed or you’re freezing your ass off because your furnace doesn’t work, Gwen, don’t call my number. Call Rambo there,” he jerked his head toward Hawk, “and hope he knows how to use a fucking wrench.”
Then he walked out my front door.
When he did I swung to face Hawk and Tracy.
“What the hell?” I yelled.
“Babe,” Hawk replied.
“I know,” Tracy said softly. “It was harsh, honey, but Cam isn’t here and someone had to say it. She and I have been talking about it for ages. He should have made his move or moved on. He didn’t do either. Now that you have Hawk, maybe he’ll forget about you and move on.”
Cam and her had been talking about it for ages? Why hadn’t they talked to me?
I didn’t ask this. Instead I shouted, “He’s already moved on! He’s got a girlfriend.”
Tracy waved her hand in front of her face. “Hardly. Every girl he picks he picks so they’d be someone he could drop like a rock if you gave him an in. I don’t like her. Cam doesn’t like her. You don’t like her. She’s a whiner. No one likes a whiner. Even Troy. Therefore, easy to drop like a rock.”
I looked at Tracy. Then I looked at Hawk. Then I looked at my audience of commandos.
Then I went into denial.
“This isn’t happening,” I announced. “I can’t do this right now. My Pad Thai is already cold. I need to nuke it, eat it and get work done. No one exists. I live in a world all alone.”
Then I stomped through Tracy and Hawk, up my stairs and to my food.
When I’d grabbed my noodles and turned around, Hawk was in the door.
“Babe,” he said.
“I don’t see you. You don’t exist,” I informed him.
“Gwen, someone had to tell him.”
“No, they didn’t and if they did, it didn’t have to be you,” I shot back.
“I did him a favor.”
“Really? You did? Should I call Troy and ask him if he thought you did him a favor, telling him that shit in front of me, Trace and your bunch of badasses?”
“Next time, he’ll get his finger outta his ass.”
Definitely exploring the boundaries of head explosion.
“Go away. I don’t want to see you for, I don’t know… maybe a million years. A million years ought to do it. If I have a million years, I think I’ll get over being,” I leaned forward, “insanely pissed at you.”
He grinned.
Then he repeated, “Babe.”
“Thanks for the food,” I snapped sounding about as grateful as I felt, which was to say, not at all. I walked toward him and finished, “See you in a million years.”
As I tried to move around him, he caught me with an arm around my belly and I decided not to struggle because firstly, I might drop my Pad Thai and secondly, I’d lose.
“What?” I snapped when I’d twisted my neck to look up at him.
“We’re havin’ dinner tonight,” he informed me.
“No, we’re not,” I informed him. “I’m enduring dinner with Dad and Meredith where I’ll have to explain about Ginger and you. Then I’m working until I fall asleep at the keyboard.”
His brows drew together. “Are you that far behind?”
“Yes!” I shouted. “I was that far behind yesterday when Darla came to visit and I stupid, stupid, stupidly decided to go to Ride. Now I’m even more far behind and all this shit, Hawk, it is not helping.”
“I should let you get shit done,” he muttered.
“You think?” I snapped.
His arm curled, moving me to his front and curving around me so I had to execute evasive maneuvers not to lose my Pad Thai.
“Hawk…” I warned when his head dropped, I twisted my neck to try to avoid it, his arm tightened, his other one wrapping around me, and I failed to avoid his lips hitting my neck.
“You need to get caught up, baby, carve some time out for me,” he murmured against my neck and I was about to say something snotty but wasn’t able to when his tongue touched the skin behind my ear, I instantly forgot I was insanely pissed at him and then he said, “We’re due.”
“Due?” I breathed because I could still feel his tongue behind my ear.
His head came up, he looked at me and he repeated, “Due.”
“For what?”
His black eyes warmed, the dimples popped out and his arms got even tighter, plastering me to his long, hard body.
Oh.
Due.
Mm.
I momentarily forgot that we were over as I stared into his warm, black eyes in the light of day, felt his long, hard body against mine and mentally recalled what that body felt like naked.
Mm.
“Babe,” he called and I blinked.
“Hunh?”
He smiled, this time with white teeth against his beautiful brown skin and he dropped his head and kissed me lightly.
“Get to work,” he ordered.
Then, suddenly, he was gone.
I stood there with my Pad Thai staring at my empty hall thinking, shit.
Chapter Seven
Certainty Borne of Nothing but Instinct
I’d managed to get rid of Tracy, nuke and eat my Pad Thai and return to my computer but after an hour of work, my mind wandered. My foot came up so I could rest my heel on the seat, I swiveled my chair and I put my chin to my knee so I could comfortably stare out the window without doing anything too taxing, like holding my own head up.
I wasn’t daydreaming, I was thinking about where I’d gone wrong.
Two years ago, after Tracy had successfully passed an online course in bartending, she’d stepped out of her chosen career of hopscotching through every exclusive retail clothing store at Cherry Creek Mall and scored a job at Club. Club was a trendy eatery that had really good food, stylish, sophisticated glasses in which they served their drinks, three open fires that made the space warm and welcoming, every table was a booth and it had a huge circular bar in the middle where you could see and be seen.
At the time Club was Cam, Trace and my top spot for seeing and being seen while drinking cosmopolitans (though, to be honest, we went there because of the glasses which were flipping fantastic). It now was not since Tracy had broken so many of their fancy glasses, her boss had to let her go. He did this with tears in his eyes because he, like any man with a pulse, was half in love with her – I’d seen it, I was there, so was Cam and it wasn’t pretty.
But I was there one night a year and a half ago, drinking cosmos and keeping Tracy company on her shift.
I was well into cosmo number three and already slightly hammered because I was on some crazy diet where I was detoxing (though I had altered the diet to allow cosmos, of course) and therefore had nearly three cosmos under my belt with zero food for the day.
This was stupid, I could see this now. At the time, it didn’t seem stupid because Tracy was my ride. Troy had dropped me off and Tracy was taking me home. I could get as drunk as I wanted, flirt as much as I wanted and cackle with Tracy as much as I wanted.
Then he walked in, the Great Mystery Man, now known as Cabe “Hawk” Delgado.
I’d fallen in love with him at first sight. No joke. He was hot but it wasn’t lust. It was love.
Okay, it was part lust but it was mostly love.
There was no explaining this, even now, looking back. There was just something about the way he was, wearing faded jeans, a tailored black shirt and great black boots, clearly comfortable and confident in his style and in himself; the way he moved, graceful yet powerful, masculine, with his prowl, his confidence, his natural charisma and his looks, he owned the room; and the way he could sit at a booth and eat all alone and seem totally cool with that. He fiddled with his phone, receiving and sending texts, taking calls, he glanced here and there and he seemed like he was naturally alert to every nuance of the room but he was at ease in his own company and it was freaking awesome.
To my delight, they’d seated him at a booth on my side of the bar.
As usual when going out (Hawk did not lie, when I went out, I showed skin but that was me and Meredith taught me to embrace my own style so I did), I’d worn a skimpy, clingy, stretchy dress that showed lots of leg due to it being uber-short, lots of arm due to it being sleeveless and lots of back due to a low vee. At the time I’d owned eleven little black dresses and that dress was number three in my ranking of how hot they were (now I owned thirteen and it had slid down to position five). I had on spike-heeled, strappy sandals, my hair was out to there and my makeup was “do you come here often?”
I wasn’t on the prowl, I was there to have a nice night with my girlfriend who was fucking up at work and needed moral support but that didn’t mean I couldn’t look hot.
Sitting on my barstool, drinking cosmos like they were diet grape soda, I did everything I could to get Hawk’s attention, twisting and turning on my stool, crossing and uncrossing my legs, sucking and twirling a cocktail straw, flipping my hair unnecessarily.
And as he ate (and as I surreptitiously watched him eat, and sit, and fiddle with his phone, etc.), he didn’t even look at me.
So when he paid his bill, slid out of the booth and it was clear he was about to leave, I was devastated.
Yes, the feeling was devastated.
I knew in my cosmo-drenched brain that that man walking out the door was the end of my life. It was the loss of my last chance at happiness. It was the death of a dream.
And I’d turned to the bar, downed the last sip of my cosmo and contemplated hare kare when, suddenly, I felt a warm hand on the skin of my lower back.
I twisted my neck, looked up and there he was.
I held my breath and he asked, “You comin’ or what?”
That was it. That was his pickup line. “You comin’ or what?”
I went. I grabbed my purse, gave the high sign to a staring Tracy and walked out of that restaurant with him. He loaded me into a black SUV, asked my address, took me home and fucked my brains out.
I’d never done anything like that before in my life, not even close. It was an unbelievably insane thing to do.
And it was magnificent.
Until I woke up the next morning and he was gone.
I knew I’d fucked up. He was amazing. I was a drunken one night stand, I didn’t have his number and didn’t know his name.
I’d instantly plummeted into the depths of despair and washed away my hangover that very night with more cosmopolitans at Club, this time with Tracy bartending and Cam at my side where I explained the depths of my despair at length and every time the door opened or there was movement in that direction, I craned my neck, hoping he was coming in looking for me.
He wasn’t.
It wasn’t until three days later when I felt my comforter slide back, waking me from a deep sleep, my mind and body froze in terrified panic, then his weight hit the bed, his never to be forgotten voice said, “Hey babe,” his arms wrapped around me and he kissed me. Then he did other things to me, really, really good things.
Thus it began and even though at the start I was hopeful it would change – I’d manage to ask his name or he’d ask my number or he’d knock on the door during the day or he’d spend the night and take me out to breakfast – it didn’t change.
And sitting there in my office, staring out the window when I should have been working, I realized that I was right there with Tracy all this time. I was hopeful. I wanted that feeling back that I had when I first saw him and the feeling I got, bu
t I foolishly denied, every time he came to call. The butterflies in my stomach. The certainty that was borne of nothing but instinct that he was the one.
But a year and a half slid by and I kept my hope while losing my dignity again and again and again.
Now things had changed.
And now I was learning that he might be hot, he might be confident, he might move with grace and there might be a multitude of things that were fascinating about him but he also could be an annoying, bossy jerk who told me what to do, didn’t listen to me and could hurt Troy’s feelings without batting an eye.
On this thought my phone rang and I jumped. It was the house phone which never rang. Everyone called my cell. But I’d turned off my cell so I could get some work done thus Tracy coming by for a surprise visit after she heard about my break-in and she couldn’t get hold of me.
Automatically I reached out and took it off its base then wished I didn’t as I beeped the button and put it to my ear thinking it was probably a marketer because on the rare occasion my phone rang it was always a marketer.
“Hello?” I asked hesitantly, ready to beep it off the instant I heard a marketer.
I didn’t hear a marketer.
“Ohmigod!” Cam shrieked.
I blinked and my chin came off my knee. Camille Antoine was not a girlie shrieker.
“Cam?” I called.
“Ohmigod!”
Oh boy. I knew what this was.
“Cam, the break-in… it’s cool, it’s –”
“You will not believe what happened!”
My back straightened.
Ohmigod! Leo proposed! Tracy, Cam and I had been waiting for-flipping-ever for Leo to propose (Cam obviously more than Trace and I but just barely). None of us could figure out, since they’d known each other for five years and been living together for four, what was taking so long.
Now it had happened.
Yay!
“Oh Cam, I’m so –” I started to gush.
But she cut off my gushing with, “Mitch asked to be taken off the case!”
I blinked again.
Then I asked, “What?”
“The case!” she cried. “The case! It’s the kind of case that could make his career. He scores a bust on this we’re talking awards, commendations, book deals. And he asked to be taken off the case because of you.”