“Right,” she smiles, a memory in her eyes. “I guess I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be introduced to the Cocker Family — it’s been so long that I’ve been one of them.”
His father walks up, silver dotting his temples, sharp laugh lines around his eyes even when he’s not smiling. But nothing is sharper than his jawline, still perfect after all the years since that Marines photograph was taken. “Meagan, Zoe is out front talking to the caterer with some guy hovering by her.” Seeing me for the first time, he pauses, searching for my name. “Diana, right?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry, a lot is going on today. And then I just saw him. Out there. With my daughter. Good to see you again.” Clasping Wyatt’s shoulder, he asks, “Nathan come with you?”
“He beat me here. Somewhere outside I guess.” Wyatt takes my hand. “Dad, Mom, Diana’s sticking around for a while.”
Their faces stay calm, and his father’s lips form the smirk he passed down to his son. “Kinda figured that out, Wy.”
Wyatt grins. “Okay, fine. I’m just making it official. She’s my girlfriend now. As of five minutes ago.”
His parents are trying not to laugh at him. “Okay, good,” says Mrs. Cocker, before turning to her husband and placing her hand on his black button-up. “Jeremy, did you just say Zoe is dating somebody?”
“That’s what it looks like!”
“Well, I want to meet him.” She excuses herself, leaving Mr. Cocker shoving his hands into his pockets.
Wyatt turns around, both men staring at her exit.
“Want me to beat him up, Dad? I’ll get Nathan. Nicholas is too settled to do it, but me and Nate…”
“I don’t know, maybe. Let’s get to know him first. Oh, you’re messing with me.” His voice lowers. “Almost took you up on it. I don’t care if she’s older than you are, she’s my only daughter. You won’t understand until you have one of your own. If you’re ever that lucky.”
“Hey!”
Mr. Cocker holds his eyes. “You could have all boys.”
“Oh. I thought you were saying I might not be a dad someday.”
To remind him I’m here, I quickly interrupt, “Let’s go see who’s here.”
Wyatt looks at me with questions in his eyes before they dissipate as he realizes, “All this talk about kids worrying you, Beautiful?”
Since we’ve never had sex?
Yeah.
Plus I don’t like how good it sounds.
“No, not worried. Just a little thirsty.”
He chuckles, and waves to his father. “See you out there. I’m going to get Nathan so we can kick that guy’s…butt.”
They share a look I don’t quite understand. As we walk onto a crowded porch, down its steps, and onto a lawn that would feel enormous if it weren’t for all of the people making it appear not-quite-big-enough, Wyatt greets every other person, introducing me to the important ones — his family.
Turns out I know a lot of the other guests. Most of Silver Linings is here, much of our staff and the residents who could make the trip. Since they all can’t, it occurs to me that some staff members had to work today, and I feel bad for them that they had to miss this.
Nathan strolls up, very handsome in a black suit. “Grams would’ve loved this turn-out.”
Wyatt nods, sad eyes scanning conversations. “She would’ve. Let’s go this way.”
He leads us deep into the crowd and I notice several long tables pushed together with food covered by mesh tents. Ginormous pots of chili, platters of corn bread, corn on the cob, BBQ ribs, and huge serving bowls of five different salads, are just the beginning.
“And this is before catering arrived?” I mutter in disbelief.
Wyatt asks, “Did you say something?”
“I hope you don’t expect me to cook like your grandmother.”
He frowns, glances to the food, and grins, “Nobody cooks like Grandma Nance.”
Nathan agrees, “Not even Mom.”
“Yeah, because Mom doesn’t make down-home comfort food.”
“If it doesn’t look like art, Mom won’t serve it.” Nathan nods to a pretty brunette waving at them, a baby on her hip. “Hey Paige! Gabriel around?”
“He’s picking up Elijah from the airport!”
Turning to me, Nathan explains, “That’s his twin. Probably wanted alone time with him.”
Wyatt agrees, “I’m glad Elijah’s coming.”
Up ahead I see the top of a white fin, and soon the dolphin statue comes into view, water cascading into a pond fenced in with mesh so six half-matured ducks can’t escape and wreak havoc. Children are staring at them, poking and talking loudly like kids do when they’re excited.
“Look how big they are!” I walk closer and squat down to be face to face with the little cuties. Wyatt and his brother stand on the other side, crossed arms the both of them. “How long until they can go free?”
“Three or four weeks?” Wyatt shrugs. “Not sure.”
“That’s about right.” His grandfather walks up to us, green eyes somber. “We had a vet come to the house last week.”
I rise up, children on all sides of me as I ask, “A normal vet?”
“No, I was surprised to find they don’t treat all animals. Birds are a different challenge altogether, it turns out. He taught me a lot about these li’l guys. Should have had him here earlier, but I thought I’d figure it out. And I did. For the most part.”
The similarities between Wyatt and his grandfather don’t escape my attention. I’ve heard May’s stories, so many stories about her son who is standing before me now with white hair and some of the attributes his father had. It gives me a feeling of familiarity and comfort with Michael Cocker that I wouldn’t normally feel.
So when he produces an envelope from his pocket and walks up to me, I don’t feel surprised. “Diana, I found this in my mother’s things.”
My fingers float out as I read my name gently scrawled in May’s cursive handwriting. Turning the envelope over I pause. Gaze drifting up to Michael, I ask, “You opened it?”
“I didn’t know it was for you. I thought it was an old letter. Not present day. So many of her belongings were from her youth. Then I read it and realized. My apologies.” Turning his back to Wyatt, he quiets his volume to warn me, “Read it alone.”
I watch him walk away, and Wyatt and Nathan come around the fountain, my new boyfriend asking, “What’d he just say to you?”
“May wrote me a letter.”
“Open it up.”
Nathan mutters, “Grandpa already did.”
“It’s for me.” I hold it closer. “Can I read it first?”
Wyatt frowns, “Of course.”
“Thank you.”
Chapter 37
Diana
With all of my introductions, and the back-to-back conversations they begin, I haven’t had a free moment to open this letter.
I didn’t bring a bag with me, key left in a secret hiding spot back home and lipstick in my pocket, so the envelope is burning a hole in my left hand.
Wyatt hands me two plates so he can serve us up. He takes my envelope, glancing to it, and I almost snatch it back.
He eyes me. “Why are you so weird about this thing?”
“Weird?”
“Yeah, you’re acting strange.”
Because I’m wondering why your grandfather would say that. And I remember May’s warning about you!
“It’s special to me.”
He nods, accepting this, and fills up both plates like I’m as big as he is. We move down the line and he asks, “What salad?”
“Kale.”
“You got it.”
“Do you think I’m Nathan?”
He blinks at me, then to the plates. “Too much.”
“Li’l bit.”
“Nathan!” His brother walks over and he says, “Take one of those. I overdid it.”
Nate chuckles, “You don’t think Diana wants five ribs, three corn
on the cobs, and two corn breads heaped with chili on top?”
“I was tempted,” I smile.
Wyatt calls down, “Elijah! Make yourself useful, Mr. D.C., and pass up a fresh plate for my girlfriend.”
The new Senator smirks, raising his voice to call back, “First I have to believe you have a girlfriend.”
A lot of people laugh at this. Too many. The gold flecks in Wyatt’s eyes burn hot, but he says nothing. Now I really want that envelope back.
“Hey family! How ‘bout you put just a little bit of everything on that plate as it’s passed down. Help me out since this line might riot if I try to go backwards.”
Everyone is happy to help. One after the other places something new on my plate until it arrives looking pretty much perfect.
“This is why we’re Cockers!” Wyatt grins before calling to Elijah, “We have each other’s backs, and never make fun of each other.”
Elijah calls out, “I’ll agree with the first part, but the second?” He glances around, then shouts, “Fuck if we don’t!”
Every Cocker, even the kids, yells in unison, “Language!!!”
I was told about the inside joke — that Grams would always reprimand family with that one word, every time someone accidentally, or purposefully, swore in her presence.
Those who aren’t family, look around, confused by what must be an inside joke with how much laughter has broken out. The laughter gets instantly replaced by sadness and nostalgia, conversations taking a moment to start back up.
But it made Wyatt’s shoulders relax, and the fire is gone from his eyes.
The brothers sit together on my right. Wren is on my left, her baby on her lap, husband and quarterback Eric Cocker chowing down while he talks to his brother, Ethan, who’s sitting across from him with his family. To Wyatt’s right, past Nate, is their cousin Caden, the surgeon who does indeed look like Wyatt.
Wren asks me, “Diana, did Grams every tell you why she said ‘Language?’ like that?”
I shake my head, “No, I wish I’d known about it when she was alive. Nobody swears at Silver Linings really. Wyatt shared the tradition with me on the way over. He was looking forward to someone sparking it today.”
On the table is my envelope.
Forgotten by him.
Not by me.
I slowly slide it onto my lap. “I’m going to use the bathroom.”
She nods, and Wyatt, mid-conversation with Nate and Caden, distractedly touches my hip as I rise up for the perfect escape.
As I pass his grandparents, my eyes lock with Michael’s. He sees what I’m holding and returns to the conversation. I blink with surprise, and sadness melts my heart. On the empty bench to his left are May’s two floral cushions, their owner forever absent.
Up the outdoor porch steps I go, mind preoccupied with what she may have written to me.
Inside the kitchen I come face to face with Nicholas Cocker as he reaches into the refrigerator for a beer. Seeing me, he pauses, dark brown eyes narrowing slightly. “Diana, I heard my brother call you his girlfriend just now.” Closing the door, he extends his hand. “Gotta shake the hand of the woman who could make him say that.”
I sigh, “Everyone keeps saying the same thing. You know what it makes me wonder?”
“What?”
“Why my belly tells me he’s the one?”
Nicholas’s lips part, and I leave him like that.
Okay, I don’t know this house, but I’m sure those stairs lead to at least three bathrooms. I walk up them, their framed photographs giving me pause. The six brothers growing up through camping trips, school photos, childhood sports events, even one of Jett with boxing gloves, one of Jaxson at what must have been the day he purchased a ranch. There are pictures of Wyatt’s grandparents when they were newly married, black and white smiles, and her holding swaddled boys in frame after frame. I stop at May with her husband, sometime in the 1950’s from their dated attire. She’s laughing in his arms, and he’s leaning in to whisper something that anyone looking at this wishes they could hear.
Is she with him now?
Continuing onward, I’m staring at nothing, the paper envelope a heavy weight in my hand that makes my feet drag.
I stop, and look at it.
Why am I doing this?
I know one thing.
I love this man.
And I don’t need permission.
Folding the envelope four times so it can fit in my pocket, I tuck it away and head back to where I want to be.
By and on his side.
Chapter 38
One month later
Diana
“You look pleased with yourself,” I smile as Wyatt turns the wheel down an unfamiliar road, his uniform’s sleeve tugging on a thick bicep that inspires lust in me every time I look at it. “Excited to drive me around in your cop car?”
“Without Washington giving me a hard time? Yep.”
“I’ve never done a ride-along.” I correct myself, “Except for when I met you, but that doesn’t really count.”
“That was a ride over you.”
“Har har, Wyatt, har har.”
His laugh is as easy and relaxed as his posture. I usually see him in plain clothes, so I keep checking out his body in this tailored uniform whenever I think he won’t notice. Lord knows the man has a big enough head.
“So, is this your normal route?”
“We don’t have a route. It’s called a beat. Or zone. But no route. That implies same way every day, and that’s never how it is.”
“Hmm,” I nod, eyes dropping from his shiny badge to his thigh as he rests his right hand on it, fabric tight over his large thigh muscle.
“You wet?”
My eyes dart up. “Excuse me?”
His voice is thicker. “I see you checking me out, Diana.”
“I am not!”
“Yeah, right.”
Sighing, I face forward and purse my lips, subconsciously pushing my skirt down. “I wasn’t.”
“Sure.”
“I wasn’t!”
“Yeah, you were. And you’re lucky.”
“To be with someone who won’t have sex with me after three months and change?” I ask and dryly add, “Yeah, real lucky.”
Truth is that I’ve enjoyed these months of getting to know him. But it really is torture not being able to touch his naked body when mine so wants to.
He pulls onto a dirt road off-limits to the public. Gravel spits under his patrol car’s tires as Wyatt navigates pot holes. Trees and overgrown brush on the sides of the road grow dense. Splashes of sunlight become fewer and farther between, the heat of a southern summer day beading sweat on us both. “You’re lucky because you’re about to get lucky.”
My eyes flick to his as he waits for my reaction. “Did you just say I’m about to…”
“You want to fuck?” He turns onto a narrower road, and puts the car in park.
My jaw has lost its elasticity, dropped all the way down to my very interested nipples. “Out here?”
Wyatt pushes a button and his seat slides way back, the bulge in his uniform unmistakable as he removes his belt and lays it on the dash, gun pointed away.
He reaches over, scoops me up with a little help from my desire to make this happen. I settle in, hiking up my skirt, straddling Wyatt’s narrow hips until my panties are against his warm zipper.
Leaning down so that our lips almost touch I tease him, “You couldn’t have chosen a bed?”
He traces my breasts through my blouse, not in a hurry. “I’m going to wait three months to do it missionary? Don’t think so. Look at these. You’re poking through your bra. Nothing can hold you back.”
“Right back atcha.” I lick just inside his lip and sit up to unbutton his shirt. My fingers hesitate. “Wait. No.”
He smirks, “You want the uniform on?”
“Mmmhmm.”
Wyatt’s left hand slides up my chest, over my collarbone and into my hair. He cups my h
ead and roughly kisses me, raising his hips to grind his heat into mine. Tingles zip up my abdomen, my stomach, until goosebumps tight my nipples more, to painfully hard points.
Our tongues tease as we kiss, lashing and releasing. Wyatt’s hands go under my blouse, my bra, and he holds my naked flesh for a moment before reaching back and unsnapping me to freedom.
Unbuttoning a few, he pulls my blouse open and stares at my naked breasts, the bra still needing to be dragged off of my shoulders. In a moment, the blouse is gone and I’m in his mouth. His tongue is taut, then soft, then taut again as he devours me.
My pussy is humming, breasts sending the message that Wyatt knows what he’s doing. There’s a reverence to this. He’s not performing. It’s a release of inhibitions where he lets his inner animal out of its cage.
His arm wraps around my lower back, holding me on him while he bucks his bulge, licking my breasts, teasing my nipples to ecstatic feelings they’ve never experienced.
I always felt rushed here, before. Like the guys I’d been with thought my breasts were for them to bounce around for a couple seconds, or kiss without realizing I was attached to them. There’s a reason someone invented the word ‘manhandle.’
Wyatt isn’t doing that. He’s kissing and licking and teasing me like he could do this all day, and it’s for me as much as for him. The time he’s taking, the ways he’s enjoying it, it opens my senses to a deeper level of arousal I feel in every cell of my body.
Watching him lick me, I’m lightly panting, my eyelashes struggling to stay separate.
His right hand slides under my skirt and I rise up a little so he can discover how wet I am. He groans into my breasts before locking eyes with me.
“Come here.”
Chapter 39
Diana
Our kiss crashes together as we both go for his zipper. I let go to wrestle my panties, which takes some doing. We both start laughing.
“Shush!” I tell him. “You’re the one who wanted to do this in a car!”
I might be complaining but there’s no basis for it. I’m perfectly happy with this locale, this circumstance, this man and his adventurous mind.
Cocky Cop: Cocker Brothers - Book 23 Page 18