Mystery Man

Chapter Eight How We Met

As I headed to Dad and Meredith’s house I was feeling pretty good. I’d managed to make some headway on work and load up my files on my laptop before leaving my house.

I had a plan: eat dinner, explain shit to Dad and Meredith, do both of these things very fast then hole myself in Dad’s Den and work until my vision got blurry.

The only flaw in this plan was that I was tired. I’d only had about four good hours of sleep last night so I was running on empty. In my business attention to detail was key and getting fuzzy was not good. But I figured I had enough mojo left to squeeze in two or three good hours of concentration and, if I got a decent night’s sleep, tomorrow I could hit it fully loaded and kick some book-editing ass.

With my plan of attack all sorted out, and my excuse of having to get work done a good one so Dad would cut his lecture short, I was feeling good, totally psyched up for dinner at my parents’.

That was until their house became visible and I saw a dark, metallic gray kickass Camaro parked out front.

I was beginning to understand why people were moved to acts of extreme violence when I parked behind the Camaro.

Even so, as I turned off my car and set the parking brake, I did take a moment to reflect on the fact that it was too bad Hawk and I were so over. I would love to ride in that Camaro.

I got out, rounded the car and grabbed my bag and laptop. Then I walked to the house.

If I was a different kind of woman, in other words I didn’t have my mother’s blood in my veins, I would have walked to the house slowly, considering my options, calming myself, building a plan of attack.

I did not do this. I stomped up to the house, opened the door, encountered a wave of strong garlic smells and stomped in.

My parents lived in a big house on a slight rise. Stairs dead ahead leading to a landing with a big window. Huge living room to the left that had a small den off of it at the front of the house, another small conservatory-like space behind the den also off the living room. Enormous kitchen to the right with a big area for the dining room table. Half bath and utility to the back of the kitchen that led to a garage. Wall to wall wool carpet throughout except the kitchen which was tiled. Three bedrooms and two baths upstairs, one shared, one off the master suite.

The garden level was an apartment that they’d rented out since I could remember to a woman named Mrs. Mayhew who had three cats. In her tenure in the apartment the cats had rotated due to kitty death, and, once, kitty desertion though Mrs. Mayhew contended it was kitty theft and I was prone to believe her since she treated those cats better than most people treated their children, but Mrs. Mayhew never rotated. She had been old as the hills for as long as I could remember. She was also a silent neighbor. No loud music, no loud parties, no stream of constant visitors. And best of all, she put up with Ginger because she admired Dad, adored Meredith and cared a lot about me.

Before Ginger and I moved out (I never moved home after graduating U of C – Ginger took longer and graduated high school by what we all considered a minor miracle), there were four bedrooms upstairs but after I moved out Dad had turned one of the smaller bedrooms into a master bath. And Dad, being Dad, and Meredith, being Meredith, meant the whole pad was well-maintained, well-decorated, homey, warm and comfortable.

Like it was right then with a fire burning in the grate of the living room fireplace and candles lit throughout.

But once I’d swept the house with a glance, seeing Dad was entertaining Hawk in the living room and the table was set for four, my gaze swung left again and I took in Dad in his armchair and Hawk on the couch, his back to me, his arm stretched across the back of the couch but his neck twisted to look over his shoulder at me.

I dropped my bags and opened my mouth to shout.

“Honey,” Dad got there before me, straightening out of his chair, a bottle of beer in his hand, “why didn’t you tell us Hawk was coming to dinner?”

“No bother! No bother!” Meredith’s voice came at me from the right where I looked to see her rushing into the room carrying a dishtowel. “We have plenty. He’s a big guy but I always make plenty. And Bax giving me the idea last night, I’d already planned for lasagna.”

I was forced to delay my tirade when Meredith hit the entry area at the same time Dad did. Dad leaned in to kiss me and I automatically tipped my head back to accept it. Then I turned to Meredith and bent to give her a kiss and she lifted one arm to add a shoulder hug because this was her way.

Then I straightened and turned to Hawk who was standing at the side of the couch, arms crossed on his chest, exuding badass cool while watching my welcome home.

Then I opened my mouth to yell.

Dad again got there before me when he announced, “I’ll just go whip up a cosmo.”

I turned to my father. “Can’t, Dad, after dinner, I have to work.”

His brows shot up. “But we’re having a family dinner.”

“I’m behind,” I explained.

Dad’s expression changed and I knew it so well I could sketch a perfect rendition of it while blindfolded (that was, if I could sketch).

Lecture Face.

“Gwendolyn, how many times do I have to tell you, do not procrastinate.”

“Your Dad’s right, honey, whenever you procrastinate you get all stressy and in a bad mood,” Meredith put in.

“Don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today,” Dad went on as if Meredith didn’t speak.

“Then you eat food you shouldn’t eat and go out and buy clothes you shouldn’t buy and get even more grumpy,” Meredith continued like Dad didn’t speak.

“Peace of mind, that’s what good time management skills bring you, peace of mind,” Dad carried on.

“And you wouldn’t have to take on so many clients if you didn’t have to pay off your credit cards,” Meredith kept going.

“I’m always telling you, you need to learn focus,” Dad persisted.

“And I’m always telling you, accessorize. Accessories are the key. You just need to spend your hard earned money on a few, fabulous core pieces in your wardrobe and you can make an entirely new outfit by just switching out a scarf!” Meredith declared then finished. “And scarves cost way less than owning ten little black dresses.”

“I own thirteen little black dresses,” I amended because, seriously, it was important to keep track.

“See!” Meredith cried.

It occurred to me then that Hawk was watching me, a thirty-three year old woman who had been taking care of herself for over a decade, get lectured like I was a teenager about the same time a buzzer went off in the kitchen.

“Bread’s done!” Meredith exclaimed.

“Soup’s up,” Dad added on a smile aimed in Hawk’s direction. “You can thank me later, son, for the joy you are about to experience.”

“Everyone to the table,” Meredith ordered, hurrying toward the kitchen.

“I need to talk to Hawk,” I announced.

“Later, honey, Mer’s garlic bread waits for no man… or woman,” Dad grinned at me and moved toward the table.

My head turned toward Hawk to see him moving my way. Robbed of my opportunity to lay into him and maybe explain we were over in sign language or go into a trance and speak in tongues or possibly tap out my message in Morse Code, hoping one or the other would penetrate his macho man anti-communication fortress, I decided to communicate my extreme unhappiness by glaring.

Hawk ignored my glare and I knew he was doing this when he got close, hooked me around the neck, yanked me to his side and propelled me to the table, head bent to my ear where he murmured, “See you’re stressy and in a bad mood.”

He lifted his head and I twisted my neck to look up at him and see he was grinning.

“Just curious, but do you know how much contract killers cost and, incidentally, would you have a recommendation?”

We had made it to the table when I uttered my comment and Hawk stopped us, turned me full frontal into his arms, threw his head back and burst out laughing.

I stared, completely forgetting my snit.

He had a great laugh, it was deep and resonant and I could tell it came straight from the gut.

Then, still laughing, he bent his head and kissed me. No tongue but it was a kiss, a definite kiss, hard and longish and right in front of my Dad while standing at my family’s dinner table.

When his mouth broke from mine and he lifted his head, I blinked then snapped, “You can’t kiss me in my parents’ house in front of my Dad!”

“Just did, Sweet Pea,” Hawk returned.

“Well don’t do it again.” I was still snapping.

“Then don’t be so hilarious,” Hawk shot back. “You make me laugh, babe, I’m warnin’ you now, when I’m done, I’m gonna kiss you.”

“I didn’t mean to be hilarious,” I explained snottily.

“Well, you were.”

“How can I control it if I don’t know when you’re going to find something funny?”

“Guess you better brace, babe, ‘cause, the way you are, it could happen at any time.”

I opened my mouth to retort when I realized we had an audience. My head turned and I saw Dad smiling what I knew by sheer instinct (because I certainly hadn’t seen it before) was a father’s, knowing, contented smile, warm with the knowledge his daughter had hooked Mr. Very, Very Right. I also saw Meredith standing next to Dad wearing hot pads on her hands, carrying a tray of lasagna, sporting her own smile that stated plainly she’d married Mr. Very, Very Right and she was pleased as punch her beloved stepdaughter had followed in her footsteps.

Totally… flipping… screwed.

I broke away from Hawk and declared, “I think I’ll take that cosmo now.”

Dad chuckled, moved toward the fridge and stated, “Don’t think so honey, you have to work later.” He kept moving but looked over his shoulder at Hawk. “Another beer?”

Another? Beer?

How long had he been there and since when did muscular, body-like-a-temple hot guys drink beer?

“Yeah,” Hawk replied and I looked up at him.

“You drink beer?”

He looked down at me. “Yeah,” he repeated.

“Won’t that give you a gut?” I asked.

“Life’s short, babe, you gotta live it every once in awhile and you don’t drink water with homemade lasagna and garlic bread.”

Well, his mother was half-Italian; he would know.

I decided to ignore Hawk so I turned to the kitchen. “I’ll help get the food.”

“Thanks, sweetie,” Meredith mumbled, placing the lasagna on a curly, wrought iron hot plate in the middle of the table.

Dad got me a diet grape, himself and Hawk a fresh beer, replenished Meredith’s red wine and Meredith and I loaded up the table with fresh, hot garlic bread, a huge salad and every bottle of salad dressing known to man. Then everyone passed the food around and loaded up their plates while commenting on how good the food looked and smelled (or at least Dad and I did this, Hawk just loaded up his plate).

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.