“Why’d you mention the women?” Axl demanded.
“You boys droppin’ like flies,” she noted on a shrug he couldn’t tell if it was fake casual or real.
“Explain,” Axl ground out.
She did that. “As in, gettin’ your asses claimed.”
“And?” he pushed.
“Chill, asshole,” she bit off. “Just that hot dick going off the market makes the rounds. Jesus.”
“That’s all?” Auggie kept at her.
She looked offended. “Okay, you gotta know, a sister’s ass is swinging in the wind, that sister doin’ her best to keep it together by strippin’, I’m gonna share they got problems. They don’t. If they did, like I said, I’d share.”
They did not know that. She’d never been outspoken for the sisterhood nor had she ever shared anything without getting paid.
But she looked like she genuinely meant it.
“Now, are we done?” she asked.
“You got more?” Auggie returned.
“Dude,” she snapped.
She had no more.
“Then we’re done,” Axl said.
“And even?” she pushed.
“We’ll see,” Axl muttered, giving Auggie a look and starting to turn to the door.
“Motherfuckers!” she called.
They turned back.
“I am not on your leash to yank whenever you want. You leave, we’re square,” she declared.
“B, you don’t get to make the rules,” Axl informed her.
“And you do?” she asked.
“Well, yeah,” he answered.
“Fuck you,” she spat.
After having hit his limit of “fuck offs,” that officially hit his quota for the day of “fuck yous.”
With another glance at Auggie, they moved out.
They waited until they were in the Hummer to break it down.
“Whoever this is, they’ve been active awhile. And right now, they’re setting up to steal a huge-ass appropriation of coke and arms from evidence, move it, and then buy fishing boats,” Axl stated.
“And if we get in their way, they’re gonna fuck with us. And since they’re faceless cops we don’t know, which means they have resources, they can make that hurt,” Auggie finished.
Axl pulled out of the parking spot and said, “Call it in.”
Auggie called it in.
While Axl listened to him agreeing to be back at the office for a meet about it, Axl’s phone binged.
He pulled it out of the side pocket of his cargos and waited for a stop at a light before he glanced at the text.
Hattie.
Telling him she was up, which was what he’d asked her to do in a note he left on the pillow beside her.
“When’s the meet?” Axl asked after Aug got off the phone.
“Two.”
“Right.” He waited for another light before he said, “Gotta make a call.”
“Go for it,” Auggie muttered.
He hit buttons and put the phone to his ear.
“Hey!” Hattie greeted.
Fuck, but he liked when she was chirpy.
“Sleep good?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she replied.
He did not.
He would have, if he’d been able to jack off to thoughts of her in that dress, and what he wanted to do to her in it. But he didn’t want her wandering out for a glass of water and catching him jacking to her.
At least, not at this juncture.
Then again, when they got to that juncture, he wouldn’t be on the couch.
“Sly there?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she told him.
“Good. Tonight, I’m cooking and we’re hanging before you go to work,” he declared.
Nothing from Hattie.
“Baby?” he called.
“Dad,” she said.
Shit.
Right.
To keep their date bummer-free, he hadn’t asked how it had gone down with her dad when she told him, for that night, she wasn’t going to take care of his grown ass.
And it wasn’t his place to intervene with her father.
Not yet. Not ever.
That was hers and he could share his opinion and advice.
But he couldn’t get in the middle of it unless it was harming her.
And after she broke it down for him the night before last about what was messing with her head in that studio weeks ago, he had yet to ascertain if it was still harming her, or what harmed her was in the past and the man had lost his power, outside what he’d done to her back then and how it still messed with her head.
“Okay, how do we juggle that?” he queried.
“Pardon?”
“I wanna make you dinner. I want time with you. You need to see to him. My guess, you’re not ready for me to go hang with your father while you sort out his dinner. So how do we juggle that?”
She didn’t readily answer.
So Axl got in there.
“What time does he eat?”
“I usually go over early because I don’t eat with him and I have to fuel before I dance.”
“What’s early?”
“Five.”
“Okay. Sly can take you over to deal with him and I’ll have dinner ready for us six, six thirty. Cool with you?”
There was a hesitation before, “Yeah.”
“Anything you don’t eat?”
“What are you making?”
The first meal he was cooking her?
Totally pulling out all the stops.
“Tuscan chicken.”
Auggie made a noise.
Axl ignored it.
“What’s that?” Hattie asked.
“You like chicken?”
“Yes.”
“Prosciutto?”
“Definitely.”
He grinned. “Spinach? Goat’s cheese? Sun-dried tomato?”
“Yes. Absolutely. Yes,” she answered in line.
His grin got bigger. “Then you’ll like this.”
“I’ll be home by six.”
“Okay, honey, see you then. You got the key I left?”
“Yes, and Axl?”
“Yep?”
“I really like our bummer-free zone. We’ll talk about Dad when that time comes. But it means a lot that you know how, uh …he was and you’re not being …”
She didn’t finish that.
“You don’t have to say that. Get yourself coffee. Enjoy the deck. Play Pac-Man. I’ll see you later.”
“Later, Axl.”
“’Bye, babe.”
He disconnected.
Instantly, Auggie asked, “Can I come to dinner tonight?”
“Fuck off.”
Aug chuckled.
Axl drove.
It took some time before Auggie said quietly, “I’m glad it’s going good, Axe.”
“Yeah,” Axl replied.
And he let it be.
Meaning, he didn’t get into Pepper again.
Auggie was right. He’d had only one date with Hattie.
But Aug didn’t know about her art, and as such, hadn’t seen it.
He also hadn’t been there to see her dancing that day Axl and Ryn saw her dance. Falling in an elegant heap on the floor. Soaring through the air in a way Michael Jordan would say, “Damn.”
And Aug had not been woken up in the middle of the night to witness a tough woman who had no idea she was tough, she was amazing, she created beauty in a variety of ways from her art to her dancing to decorating her apartment to the dress she put on for him, pull it together to finally sort their shit.
So he’d let Auggie off the hook.
For now.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Safe Place
HATTIE
Shit, you two are killing me.”
This was what Sly said after he entered Axl’s house in front of me. This being once I was done dealing with my dad and he drove me there.
I understood him.
/> The place smelled like heaven.
And I got to eat whatever that was, and Sly didn’t.
Axl appeared in the dining area.
Yup.
Heaven.
Axl kept moving, doing it smiling at me at the same time looking like he wanted to pounce on me.
I watched him moving, not smiling, but knowing I definitely looked like I wanted to pounce.
Gone was his usual work gear of cargos and tee.
In their place: supremely faded jeans, a different tee, this one dark heathered gray with yellow letters that said BLACK RIFLE COFFEE COMPANY around a knife, and his feet were bare.
Oh yes.
I wanted to pounce.
Axl made it to me, hooked me around the neck with his arm, I hit his body and his mouth hit mine.
We didn’t go at it.
But I got a reminder he sure tasted good.
“I do still exist,” Sly griped.
We broke it off, but Axl didn’t let us break apart. He kept his arm around my neck but positioned me to his side.
“And you guys suck,” Sly finished.
“Apologies, man,” Axl said, miraculously sounding both apologetic and not.
Sly hulked to the door.
“Thanks for keeping me safe today,” I called.
He stopped at the door and pinned me with a look.
“Your shit is great. Stop fucking around,” he ordered.
And with that, he left.
“What was that?” Axl asked.
I looked up at him to see him looking down at me.
And did it make me a freak I could stand there, claimed by him, gazing up into those steely blues for the rest of my life?
“He came to the studio with me today.”
Axl’s dark brows shot up. “You worked in the studio?”
I shook my head. “First, I rehearsed. One of my routines tonight has some tricky lighting, so I had to go through it with the lighting guys.”
Axl shifted us around and started walking us, attached, to the kitchen, saying, “And?”
“Then, well …I’m feeling the bug. Got something in my head. I had to go to the studio to check materials. And I found what I knew I’d find. I needed to make an order. So no, I didn’t work. But I’m going to get back to it once my order comes in.”
“Mm,” he hummed, detaching from me in the kitchen and pulling a stool from the wall that had a chrome base and footrest and black leather seat with back.
The only stool of its kind in the kitchen, but it was kickass.
He adjusted it to a place by a counter where it looked like he was making a salad and then shifted me so I knew he wanted me to climb up, which I did.
Once I was there, he moved to a cupboard, opened it, and I saw upside-down hanging wineglasses.
He commandeered one—awesome, wide-bowled and tall. He came back to the counter where the salad prep was happening, and I saw there was another wineglass there, filled with red. Not to mention the bottle.
He nabbed the bottle, poured and handed the glass to me.
“So what else did you do today?” he asked, picking up a knife and going back to cutting cucumber.
Okay.
Um.
Okay.
Was all that just … awesome?
“Hattie?” he called.
“Remind me, if I get a chance, and I’m home before you’re home, to be equally awesome with you.”
His expression changed, and apparently he liked what I said so much, he felt it needed to be communicated beyond that change.
So he put the knife down, came right to me in a way I had to open my knees so he could get between them. Once there, he took my jaw in both hands, and yeah.
That time we went at it.
When we broke off the makeout session, I was minimally panting, Axl was all I could see, and I was in no doubt he liked what I’d said.
“So, good day?” he asked.
A giggle erupted from me and I answered, “Yeah. And it keeps getting better.”
His eyes glittered with icy-blue goodness before he slid his hands away and went back to cucumbers.
I took a sip of my (excellent) wine and inquired, “How was your day? Or can I ask that?”
“You can ask that, if you don’t mind non-detailed answers,” he shared. “And we had some movement on a case. That movement is promising only because there’s been no movement for weeks. So, bottom line, it’s good.”
“Great,” I said, before I asked, “Where’s Cleo?”
“Hiding and preparing her complaint there’s someone in the house that divides attention from her, which she’ll add to her ongoing, active, but contradictory complaint about not having the house to herself where I only visit to feed her and appear when she’s feeling like getting some love.”
That didn’t get a giggle.
It just made me laugh.
He shoved the cucumber aside, grabbed a carrot and asked nonchalantly, “How’s your dad?”
Dang.
He looked at me out of the sides of his eyes, “Honey, we’re gonna have to go there.”
I sighed.
Then I said, “He was a jerk.”
And he was.
Not calling-me-a-whore jerk, but, say, in the mid-to-lower range of Dad’s multiple levels of jerkiness.
Axl looked down at the carrot in a manner I knew he intended to look down at the carrot so he didn’t do something else, like press me for details, demand I never see my father again, or get one of his six guns and go shoot him in the kneecap.
“I like to think that it’s because he’s lonely and he misses me,” I said.
“But?” Axl prompted me for what I obviously didn’t say.
“He wasn’t pleased he had to order pizza. Not that he doesn’t like pizza. Just that he’s into control. And when I show at his house, he knows he’s controlling me. And I don’t know if you know, but he has diabetes. The kind you have to closely manage. So when he doesn’t check his blood sugar or take his insulin, it’s a way to control me. It’s all an exercise in control, even though I’m not ten anymore and even then, the way he did it wasn’t okay. Mostly because controlling anyone isn’t okay at all, ever.”
Axl spoke no words.
But the carrot was getting decimated.
“I know, I know,” I guessed his reaction. “He can take care of himself. Or he could get someone to come in and do a few things to look after him without leaning so heavily on me. He has money, not a lot of it, but he has a pretty good income from a work-from-home job. He’s got a nest egg. It was bigger before he had a couple of hospital visits that bit into it. But we sold his house and downsized him—”
He turned just his head my way. “You mean you sold his house and downsized him.”
I rubbed my lips together.
“That means yes,” he said, watching my mouth.
I nodded.
Then I said, “We don’t have to talk about this.”
Axl put the knife down, grabbed his glass, took a sip of wine, and I watched his throat work while he did that.
So it took a second for me to shake myself out of the fascination when his focus came back to me and he spoke.
“You lay this stuff on your mom?”
I shook my head.
“It pisses her off,” he deduced.
I nodded my head.
“You give it to your girls?”
“Well, until recently, I wasn’t really speaking to them.”
“Before that?”
I shook my head again.
“Intend to do that?”
“I can, but I haven’t and …I don’t know. I don’t think they’ll be judgy, but they care about me. They’ve never met him. Pretty much anyone I talk to about this, Aunt Pam, Uncle Dave, Mom, my high school friend Tammy who lives in Wisconsin now who I FaceTime with a lot, and she knows all about Dad, they think I should tell him to jump in a lake.”
“So I’m your safe place.”
The
whoosh of warm, sweet, pure goodness that came from that nearly knocked me off the stool.
“Yeah, Hattie?” he pressed. “I’m your safe place. I cannot guarantee that won’t come with reactions. It goes against the grain, knowin’ a woman I care about, the woman I’m seein’, the woman who’s sleeping in my bed, walks into her dad’s house with a target on her back for abuse. But even telling you that, it’s only so you know I give a shit about you. It is not judgment. It isn’t pressure. It’s not up to me to stop it. It’s up to me to support what you feel you have to do, and support it if you feel you have to keep doing it, and then praise God if the time comes you’re done and you stop.”
“Okay,” I whispered, having heard all he said, but mostly the part about him caring about me was rattling around happily in my head.
That and all that stuff about supporting me.
“And eventually, my ass will be with you when you go and then you gotta let me do what I gotta do.”
Oh God.
The happy stuff stopped rattling.
“Axl—”
“And that would be, I am not witnessing that shit, Hattie. You can tough it out with him when you’re alone. But I’ll make it plain he does not do that shit in front of me.”
I wanted to see Axl tell Dad that he had to treat me right.
I really, really, reallyreallyreally wanted to see that.
“Well, uh … that time will be a ways off,” I noted.
“Fine,” he replied.
“And, you know, if your dad ever acts up, I’m your safe place too.”
“Well, batten down the hatches, baby, because that shit’s happening on Monday.”
My hand tightened on my wineglass so much I had to force it to relax before the glass shattered, and my voice was kind of squeaky when I asked, “What?”
“Part of my day.” He set his glass aside and went back to the carrot. “Mom called. She wants me over for dinner. I told her I’m seeing someone and it’s serious. So she wants you over for dinner too. You don’t dance Monday nights. We’re going over for dinner.”
Full-on squeaky with, “We’re what?”
He bent down, got a bowl from the cupboard (shiny black, big, nice lines, perfect for him and his home décor, because he was perfect, except when he was jumping the gun and setting up a Meet the Parents before we’d even been together a week, gah!), put it on the counter and reached for a bag of cleaned spinach.
“Dinner. Mom and Dad’s house. Monday night.”
“Axl, this is waaaaaaaaaaay early,” I pointed out, feeling I had not elongated the “way” nearly enough.
Dream Spinner (Dream Team Book 3) Page 15