Hawk felt one side of his mouth tick up.
Cisco ignored it and faced forward.
They were silent the rest of the way.
Not that B had ever been mighty, but even if there wasn’t far to fall, where she was now, she’d fallen to it.
It aspired to be a flophouse.
Christ.
“Charming,” Cisco murmured as he opened his door and got out.
Hawk did the same.
And with Joe at their back, they moved to the front door of the complex that might actually have no management. It looked abandoned.
So it was a squat.
Hawk didn’t miss Cisco had sent men ahead and they were positioned.
He also hadn’t missed the piece on Cisco’s hip.
He was also strapped.
Once inside, there wasn’t a lot of light, and what there was, was coming from candles since the electricity had been turned off. There was almost zero furniture except mattresses that had probably been hauled from a dump. Last, there were a number of smells, none of them pleasant.
And when they made it to the room where B had taken up residence, they saw the only real piece of furniture in the place.
The chair from where she was currently reigning.
She had a standing lamp next to her throwing light. That lamp had an extension cord that ran out the window, so she was stealing the juice from somewhere else.
And her phone in her hand was raised.
Her taloned thumb was moving over it when they came in.
She put her phone down.
And when they stopped in front of her, she declared, “This is the last time you see me.”
Christ, he hoped so.
Hawk nor Cisco spoke.
“You hear me? I’m out after this. And by out, I mean gone. No one gonna yank B’s chain no more,” she kept at them.
“We hear you, B, now why are we here?” Cisco said on an annoyed breath.
“They have a message for you.”
Shit.
He kept his eyes on Brandi and so did Cisco.
“And that message is?” Cisco prompted when she said nothing.
“We fold,” she said.
Hawk stood still and silent.
Cisco did the same.
Brandi said no more.
They didn’t ask for it because they both knew no more was to be said.
In unison, they both turned around and walked out.
Joe had them on the road, taking them back to where Hawk had left his Camaro when Cisco spoke.
“You believe that?” Cisco asked.
“Absolutely not,” Hawk answered.
Cisco sighed.
Hawk crossed his arms on his chest.
They were feeling the pressure.
Which was good.
But that was horseshit.
No one was laying down their cards.
The game was still on.
* * *
PEPPER
“You’ve gotta go.”
His breaths were still labored.
So were mine.
But his face was in my neck so I could feel his.
They felt beautiful.
He was also still inside me, mostly because he just came.
And so had I.
That felt even more beautiful.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered.
This shouldn’t have happened.
This never should have happened.
I pushed against his chest.
“Auggie, you have to go.”
He lifted his head and looked down at me through the dark.
“Pepper, that was good.”
No.
It was so good.
Frantic, I-can’t-wait-to-be-inside-you, I-can’t-wait-to-get-you-inside-me, wall sex right inside my front door?
That was not about ending a dry spell.
That was about Auggie.
Auggie and me.
Auggie and me and how unbelievably fucking good we were together.
On this thought, with a fair sight more desperation, I pushed again at his chest, trying to squirm away from him.
He kept hold.
And put his mouth to my ear.
“Baby, that was hot, but it was fast, and it was done before things were said. Now we gotta talk.”
“No.” I shook my head. “No talking. No nothing. That was a mistake.”
“It wasn’t a mistake.”
“It was totally a mistake. You are a mistake. This is a mistake. It’s all a huge mistake.”
He lifted his head. “I’m a mistake?”
I hated the tone of his voice.
Disbelieving.
Kinda pissed.
A thread of hurt.
God.
But I couldn’t go back on it.
I couldn’t.
This shit was not going to happen to me again.
And I wasn’t going to put Juno through it.
“Yes, Auggie.” I squirmed again and this time I got away.
My panties were somewhere on the floor. Fortunately, the skirt of my tank t-shirt dress was easy to shimmy back down.
I went to my front door that Aug slammed behind him after he stalked me into my house and before he’d pinned me to the wall.
And the reminder of all of that sent quivers down my inner thighs.
I opened the door and stood abreast of it, eyes to my feet.
“Pepper, sweetheart, you don’t want me walking out that door,” Auggie warned.
No, I don’t, I thought. I really, really don’t.
But I couldn’t have what I wanted.
I never could.
I’d learned that repeatedly.
Don’t reach, you might get it and find out (A) you didn’t want it in the first place, or (B) it didn’t want you.
So I said nothing.
He stopped in front of me. I could see the toes of his boots close to mine that were exposed by my flat sandals.
There was something very … wonderful about that.
His boots.
My sandals.
His masculine.
My toenails painted pale pink.
Him right there.
With me.
“Pepper, look at me.”
“You’ve gotta go,” I repeated.
“Juno’s with him.”
That made the back of my neck itch.
Then again, whenever my girl was gone, doing her time with her dad, I had that feeling.
“Yes, she is.”
“So we can talk.”
“We’re not talking.”
“Pepper—”
My head shot up and I snapped, “God! I shouldn’t have to say it again! Get out, Auggie! That was stupid and it was weak and it’s not happening again. I’m already mortified enough I let you fuck me. You’re just making it worse.”
He got in my face and growled, “I’m not gonna play this game.”
“I’m not playing a game.”
“I know women like you. And yes, you are.”
He knew women like me?
I didn’t ask, mostly because he didn’t give me the opportunity.
“Thanks for the hot fuck, babe,” he said. “At least that made it worth putting up with this bullshit play.”
And then he was gone.
I closed the door behind him.
Put my forehead to it.
“Huge mistake,” I whispered.
But I knew.
I could tell myself that again and again and again.
But I’d seen the girls with their guys.
So I could repeat it for eternity, and I’d never believe.
No, Augustus Hero was not a mistake.
The mistake would be if he took a chance on me.
Now that would be a mistake.
Huge.
* * *
LEE
His phone went, waking him up.
His wife, Indy, was buried under him.
It w
as their thing.
It was also a necessity.
His woman was a mover when she slept. If he didn’t pin her to the bed, his shins would be covered in bruises by morning and she’d possibly smack him in the face waking him up in the middle of the night.
Repeatedly.
He rolled off her, reached out, nabbed his phone, looked at his screen and any vestiges of sleep fled.
He took the call.
“Willie,” he greeted.
“Need your time,” Willie answered.
Willie Moses.
A good friend for years, since high school.
A cop, on the beat. A sergeant, never had a dream of detective, he was good with people and the street was in his blood.
“Now?” Lee asked.
“Now,” Willie answered.
“Text me, brother,” Lee told him.
“Got it,” Willie said and then disconnected.
Lee rolled back to Indy.
Before he could give her a kiss, she muttered drowsily as well as irritably, “Remind me again why I married you?”
“Multiple orgasms and we made two super fuckin’ cute kids,” he replied.
“Oh yeah, that’s why,” she said.
He grinned, aimed, touched his mouth to hers, then made certain the covers were still on top of her as he got out of bed.
By the time he returned, she’d be totally tangled up in them.
Which was good, he’d have to wake her to get her untangled, and him, Indy, two sleeping kids, two awake adults and a bed meant he’d get a fantastic welcome back.
He dressed, took keys, phone and a weapon with him to his car, got in and drove to where the text instructed: a dark corner of a parking lot at Mile High Stadium.
Eddie was already there.
Figured.
Lee parked next to Eddie’s truck, got out and moved to Eddie, who was leaning against his front bumper.
“Hank coming?” he asked.
“Since I didn’t know you were coming, no clue,” Eddie answered.
“Got a clue about this middle-of-the-night mystery?” Lee went on.
Eddie shook his head. “Nope.”
They heard it before they saw it.
A car approaching, headlights out.
Both put hands to their guns at hips and repositioned so Lee’s vehicle was between them and it.
It stopped and Willie could be seen in the driver’s seat.
It appeared there was a Black woman with short cropped hair in the seat beside him.
They both got out.
Lee didn’t take his eyes off the woman.
She was tall. Slender shoulders, round hips, dark skin, strong features.
She had confidence in her movements, so much, it was better described as power.
She stopped at the hood of the car and leaned against it, crossing her feet at the ankles, her arms on her chest.
Willie approached Lee and Eddie and got a lot closer.
He, too, stopped.
“Thought you boys might wanna meet Dynamite,” he said.
And then one side of his lips curled up in a smile.
* * *
AXL
It was only two days after he saw Hattie’s sculpture of them before it was delivered.
And this time, Elvira didn’t give any shit about it like she did when Boone got his.
Neither did any of the guys.
Now, when it happened, it was what it was.
He’d just returned to the office from being out in the field and it was sitting at the head of his workstation.
Light blue plastic, white words, slid into an aluminum stand.
Cheap.
Simple.
Everything.
The plaque said,
AXL PANTERA
“THEN AND NOW”
He got out his phone immediately and texted Hattie.
I love it.
Hattie texted back in less than a minute.
Good.
Don’t miss the romance the Dream
Team has been waiting for—Pepper
and Auggie’s love story is coming in
Dream Keeper!
AVAILABLE LATE 2021
Please turn the page for a preview.
CHAPTER ONE
A Perfect World
PEPPER
My phone chimed with the eleventh text I’d gotten in an hour and I just managed not to pull it out of my purse and throw it in the nearest garbage can.
Okay.
All right.
Deep breath and …
Center.
Bottom line: I needed to get over it because I didn’t want to be a hater. Hating was such an ugly thing. I didn’t like how it made me feel and I didn’t want it around my daughter. And when the world at large was so full of negativity and hate that it was pushing in sometimes on an hourly basis, the best way to keep that kind of thing from burying my little girl was, when I had her, do my all not to be a hater.
So I had to guard against the hate.
Even if the holidays were coming up and it always got bad during the holidays.
Bad in the sense of these texts I was currently getting from my sister, because she (and Mom and Dad) always thought holidays were the perfect time to win me around to their way of thinking.
Or, to be blunt (and honest), indoctrinate me and Juno into their way of life.
A way of life I’d turned my back on years ago.
You had to hand it to them, they never gave up.
But that was a stretch for a silver lining because it was also a not-great thing that they never gave up.
And it couldn’t be denied, I hated it (rephrase: disliked it intensely) when they put my sister forward to appeal to me in a sisterly/generation-sharing way.
Making this worse, I had to divide my time with my daughter, giving some of it up to her father which was never fun, but especially unfun during the holidays.
In a perfect world, my baby would be with me all the time.
In a perfectly perfect world, my baby’s daddy would not be a liar and a cheater, and we’d all be together all the time.
It was not a perfect world.
This year, I sensed it was going to be even worse because her dad had a(nother) new woman in his life, and from what I was getting, she was all in to win Corbin by showing she could be the best stepmom in Denver.
That happened a lot (the new woman and her wanting to win Corbin by using Juno) and it always involved messing with Juno’s heart. And then, when Corbin dumped her (and he would eventually dump her), part of Juno’s heart would go with her.
It hurt my baby girl.
It hurt to watch.
It also hurt because I was powerless to do anything about it.
In the beginning, I’d tried to talk to Corbin and warn him about introducing his girlfriends to his daughter too soon.
He not only didn’t want to hear me give him advice on how to father, he didn’t want to hear from me at all.
Though, even if he didn’t want to hear from me, he spent a lot of time making sure I heard from him on a variety of subjects that had to do with co-parenting (and other topics).
This regardless that Juno was eight and for the most part, we had it down (and topping that, he never listened to me and did his own thing anyway—it was like he was going for maximum frustration, and as usual with Corbin, exceeding all expectations).
And I didn’t need any of this right now.
It was career day for Juno’s class and Juno loved me. She thought I could do anything. As such, she did not get that her mom—who had been a stripper, but was now a featured dancer at a former strip club (even so, you could absolutely still describe what we did as exotic dancing, we just no longer bared all)—was not the person teachers wanted talking to their kids about their future career prospects.
But Juno thought I was cool.
Juno thought I hung the moon and that my besties, Lottie, Ryn, Hattie and Evie were the stars (all of th
em also dancers, except Evie, who used to be one, but now she was a student).
So Juno didn’t hesitate to ask me to come and chat with her class.
I had a little presentation to give. It was a lot about the choreography, costumes, lighting, music choices and working with the stage technicians, and less about how I found new and interesting ways to take off most of my clothes (obviously).
But I was nervous.
I could dance while disrobing with a crowd watching, but standing in front of them and talking to them?
Nope.
Making matters worse, they were having career days all semester, one each Tuesday. The kids invited parents or other folks in their lives to come in and chat with the class. Thus, I knew she’d asked her dad to come that day too, and as referenced earlier, he and I did not get along.
Juno was probably trying to see to my feelings and instead of telling me her father was going to be there, she’d warned me “someone else is coming.”
It was a little weird she didn’t just say, “Dad’s coming to bore everyone with anecdotes about being a baller real estate agent.”
But sometimes she got a little weird when her dad had a new woman in his life.
Therefore, during these times, I had to let her be how she needed to be, even if that was weird.
Then be prepared to pick up the pieces after.
This was what was on my mind after I got past checking in at the front office and was walking down the hall toward Juno’s classroom.
But even if my headspace was taken up with all of that, when I turned the corner to the hallway where Juno’s classroom was, nothing would have made me miss the astonishing and totally unforeseen fact that Augustus “Auggie” Hero—hot guy, ex-military, current-commando, member of my immediate posse, man I was supposed to be dating since Lottie tried to fix us up months ago, man I’d broken down and had wall sex with not long ago and then ended that episode very badly—that Auggie Hero was holding up the wall beside the door to Juno’s classroom with his broad shoulders.
But his head was turned, and his black eyes were on me.
Now there …
Embodied in that man …
Was a true perfect world.
But I felt my heart start racing and that had nothing to do with the fact he was gorgeous.
What was he doing here?
God, God, God.
It was important to repeat that he was a current commando.
A commando who, for unknown reasons, was loitering in the hallway of an elementary school.
Dream Spinner (Dream Team Book 3) Page 39