He drew an audible breath into his nostrils.
“We’re gonna work it out, Mo,” she assured him.
“It’ll break me, you get shot of me.”
Her body turned to stone at his admission, her face did too, and she stared at him.
“You’re a good woman. A class act. Smart. Funny. Love your nephews and show it. They love you back, so much, and you make it safe, so they feel free to show it. You got sass. You got talent. You believe in what you do and go all out to be the best at it there is. You’re together. You’re kind to your friends. And you can cook. I want a shot at that, Lottie. I wanna find out how much better you can get. But I already have a clue, and havin’ that clue, I know, you give it, then take it away, it won’t be like Tammy. It’ll break me. Now, knowin’ that, where you at?”
She didn’t wait even a beat.
She ordered, “Call Hawk and tell him to work faster.”
Mo no longer had the urge to spank her.
He had other urges and he had to lock himself down in order to fight them.
It was then he found out she’d take hold of any opportunity she was given.
Even going after what she wanted when he was weak.
“What happened in Afghanistan, baby?”
“Lost two brothers and killed people who were probably civilians.”
And it was then he learned she went after what she wanted so she could give him what he needed.
“You holding on with all of that?” she asked gently.
“This is why I keep busy.”
“And why you only sleep four hours a night.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, Mo,” she murmured, both words heavy with the weight of compassion he saw in her eyes. “I can’t touch you, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, I can’t touch you now. But I can promise I’m gonna take care of you, Mo.”
“That’s a tall order, Lottie.”
And she just had a piece of Afghanistan.
She had no idea about all the rest.
“I’m goal-oriented, baby,” she said quietly.
Mo stood still, eyes on her, and breathed.
“Do you need to hand me off to another one of Hawk’s men?” she offered.
Oh, hell no.
“No one is on you but me,” he growled.
She nodded immediately.
Then she smiled.
Not victoriously.
Gratefully.
“You wanna watch TV?” she asked.
“Sure,” he answered.
“Game’s on,” she said.
“Whatever,” he muttered.
“A movie?”
“Works for me.”
“Mo?”
“What?”
“Thank you, honey.”
“You need to stop it, baby,” he said, going soft.
She nodded, a lot and fast. “Right. Right. All professional.”
Like she could pull that off.
But at least she’d have a mind.
And after that…
He’d let himself think of what was after that when it was actually after.
“I’ll make popcorn,” she said.
“I’ll do a perimeter check.”
She smiled huge at him.
Huge and happy.
So…
Right.
When all was said and done, he might come out a winner for once, or he might be ground to dust.
But he knew right then it didn’t matter which way that broke.
Just as long and as much as humanly possible in the meantime, Mo had a shot to make Lottie happy.
Chapter Seven
Incremental
Lottie
The lights went dark.
I rushed off the stage and Mo was there, throwing my robe over my shoulders.
He smelled good. Clean. Like soap and man.
He’d had his shower and was back to me before my set ended.
I wanted to pounce on him.
Instead, I shoved my hands through the arms and barely had my fingers to the sides to pull the robe closed before his big hand had a powerful grip on my upper arm and he was practically dragging me down the steps to the side hall.
It was Tuesday night.
Suffice it to say, Mo knowing where it was heading between us after the threat was over, and me knowing where this was going, we were impatient for it to get done.
But Mo being all that was Mo, his impatience, like everything else about him, manifested itself in much larger ways.
The man was a ticking time bomb.
This partly had to do with him wanting to get to know me better, and it was hard (very hard) to try to keep things casual, keep a distance, be professional, when we were together twenty-four hours a day.
We cooked together. We ate together. We watched TV together. And after putting a sheet up over the windows (something I did not like, but getting what I got after, that being hanging with Mo, I was okay with it) Mo lounged on the couch opposite mine in my bedroom with his eyes closed while I read. Even with eyes closed, I knew he was awake, looking Zen (and insanely fuckable), but he was also undoubtedly alert.
We talked.
We had no choice but to get to know each other better and I knew I liked what I got (even though he wasn’t much of a talker, and as the days went by, he got quieter and quieter due to his patience waning more and more).
I also knew he liked what he got.
From when we first met, Mo didn’t need words to communicate. And the increase in dancing silver eyes and the addition of soft looks he’d give me…
Man.
Yeah.
This had to end soon.
Mo’s ticking time bomb thing also had to do with the big lug wanting to sleep with me.
And by the by, I adored that he’d referred to it during our Come to Jesus as making love.
But he was very much all guy, and men needed to get some, he was sleeping in my room, living in my home, watching me strip. The need for him to do me was so strong, it had a taste, it had a smell, it had a feel, it was constant and grew more powerful every day.
Not being able to take it there had to be torture.
I knew, because it was torture for me too.
And it was getting worse every day.
Last, but I had a feeling this was the biggest part, Mo’s impatience had a sharp edge that I did not think had to do with him wanting to take me out to dinner and ask my favorite color then take me home and fuck me stupid.
It had to do with the fact that this guy hadn’t been caught yet and there was something really not good about that.
I didn’t ask. If Mo felt I needed to know, or wanted me to know, he would tell me.
More, I was thinking it was another way he was protecting me. And he was that guy. He needed to give that to me.
So even though none of this made me want to jump for joy, I didn’t push it with him.
Like I didn’t tell him his grip was too tight and that he needed to slow down or I’d break my neck on my platform stripper shoes while he dragged me to the dressing room. A place I knew, because he communicated (nonverbally) he thought was a safe zone, unlike the stage (definitely) and the hall, and anywhere else that was accessible or visible to people he might not know.
I just moved with him as fast as I could.
He used the hand he did not have on me to pound on the door twice, bellowed, “Man coming in!” and as he was hesitating the two seconds he always gave it so the girls could get situated before he went in, I spoke.
“I’m good, Mo. Safe. Sound. Healthy. Right here. With you. You’ve got me. Yeah?”
He looked down at me and allowed me to see some of the harshness bleed out of his face.
Not all of it, but some of it.
I’d take it.
Then he pushed us into the dressing room.
Strippers poured out as we went in, and once in, Mo let me go and shut the door behind the last girl.
I
finally tied my belt on my robe.
“Shit,” he said.
I looked up at him then turned my attention to where his was and saw Carla wearing her robe, platforms off, sitting at her makeup station, holding a bag of ice to her ankle.
I rushed her way. “Ohmigod, girl! What happened?”
“Tripped coming off the stage for your set,” she muttered, eyes cast down to her ankle resting on her knee, her face pinched.
“Did you tell Smithie?” I asked.
She shook her head and finally looked up at me. “I’m just gonna ice it for a bit longer and then get back out there.”
Yeah.
She had to get back out there.
She had two kids from two different baby daddies, both pieces of shit, the dads, not the kids (her boys were great).
So she had three mouths to feed, her mom, who was a bitch, her dad, who was a drunk, her brother, who thought they were all wastes of space, especially his stripper sister who had two baby daddies (in other words, she had a brother who was a dick).
She also had a killer bod she knew how to move.
This meant she was on a stage, dancing in a thong, when the last thing she wanted to do was go home after doing that to her two young boys and then look them in the eye over Cheerios the next morning.
It wasn’t like I didn’t get Mo’s point about stripping. I did.
And Carla was Mo’s point.
Smithie paid well, but tips were essential for all these girls (including me) to up our quality of life (for some of us, significantly), and if we had dependents, give them some modicum of a quality of life.
These thoughts on my mind, I started in shock when Mo hunkered down beside me and said quietly, “Lift the ice. Let me see.”
I was shocked because he didn’t often engage with the girls.
After our last two days together, I understood this was not about him disapproving of them. It was about him being not such a talkative dude. But also, he was there to look out for me, not make friends with them. And last, he was in our space and therefore he wanted to make it as safe for the girls as he could when he couldn’t exit said space, so he didn’t call attention to himself (an impossible task for a guy like Mo, but you had to hand it to him, he tried).
I stared at his bald head fighting the desire to run my hands over it as he took a look at her ankle.
Then I stared at his large, long-fingered, veined hand as he gently prodded it.
Okay, he could drag me around with little effort.
And clearly he could go gentle.
I did not need to learn that about him when he was off-limits.
Shit.
His head tipped back to look at her face when he asked, “Scale of one to ten, ten highest, what’s the pain?”
He was still gently prodding her ankle.
She answered, “Three.”
I turned my gaze to her face and saw the pinch tighten into a wince with each prod.
Mo straightened, muttering, “Ice back on.”
Carla put the ice back on.
Mo then looked down at me and I knew by his expression he didn’t miss the winces that did not say she was at a pain level of three.
He confirmed this by saying, “Most urgent cares closed, she needs to get to the emergency room.”
“No!” Carla cried, and Mo and I turned back to her. “No. It’s gonna be fine.”
“It’s probably not broken but it’s a bad sprain,” Mo told her.
“If it’s sprained, I’ll be off the stage for a week,” she returned anxiously.
At that, I crouched down to her. “Carla, you can’t dance with a sprained ankle.”
“The ice will work,” she told me. “I just need to give it more time.”
“You need to see to it and give it time to heal if it needs that so it doesn’t get worse,” I pointed out.
“It’ll be okay.”
“Just check it out.”
She shook her head with agitation. “I can’t go to the emergency room. This isn’t urgent. I’ll be waiting forever. And I have to be home to let my neighbor go. I pay through the nose for her to come over and stay late to watch the boys. She gets pissy when I’m even later.”
In a normal situation, I would offer to go relieve the sitter after my last set.
Mo would never agree to that, so I told her, “I’ll call my mom.”
Carla shook her head again. “You can’t do that, Lottie. It’s after eleven at night.”
I grinned at her. “My mom loves kids, she loves you, and she’s the kind of person who gets off on doing things for folks. And you know Tex. He’s the king of wading in when a damsel is in distress. They’ll be all over it.”
“Tex might scare my boys,” she muttered.
This was true.
“Maybe, but in the end he’ll have them eating out of his hand,” I told her the truth. “But right now, they’re asleep and you’ll be home before they wake up, so they won’t even see him.”
She looked at her ankle then at me. “I can’t be off the stage for a week, Lottie.”
I reached out and gave her wrist a squeeze. “Just go to the hospital. Find out how bad it is.” I scooted closer on my platforms and reminded her, “And you know, if you have to take a break, we’ll take care of you. You know that, babe.”
More shaking of her head. “I can’t ask the girls to help me out. You all have your own bills to pay.”
“You won’t have to, but we will, and we won’t be pissed about it. We’ll only be pissed if you don’t take care of yourself. And anyway, Smithie would rather cut off his own arm than have you and your boys in a bind. You know that too.”
She glanced up at Mo before she whispered to me, “Smithie has a lot on his mind.”
All the girls knew about my sitch. Everyone had been interviewed and they’d all been tasked to keep an eye out for a possible crackpot that tweaked them, as crackpots were wont to do.
It sucked they were in on this, and knew this was happening to me, thus they were worried about me, and it gave me more fodder for nursing the hugest grudge I’d ever held, this being against said crackpot.
Through these thoughts, I shot her another grin, and after I had them, I said, “It’s unusual for a dude, but Smithie’s a multi-tasker.”
Carla gazed down at her ankle again.
“Can I call him?” I asked. “He’ll want to take you to the hospital.”
She gave me her eyes. “He wants to be around to look out for you.”
I jerked my head to Mo. “He gave me someone who’ll look out for me. If he knows you’re hurting, he’ll want to look out for you. And please, let me call him. If he finds out we didn’t tell him this, he’ll be ticked, at me. And I hate it when Smithie’s ticked at me.”
This was a lie. Smithie was all bark, no bite. I didn’t tick him off on purpose, but I didn’t avoid it should such an occasion arise.
Finally, I got a grin from her which meant I got out of my squat, smiling back, then moved to my station.
Mo, for the first time ever in that room, did not follow me.
He stayed close to Carla.
As I grabbed my purse to get out my phone, I watched out of the corners of my eyes and saw that he didn’t murmur reassuring words or offer to help hold the bag of ice or do anything but give her his solid, assuring presence.
But he gave her his solid, assuring presence. She was worried. She was in pain. And he gave her what he had to give.
All right.
Seriously.
I hoped that man was good in bed because I was totally falling in love with him.
I called Smithie to come and see to Carla.
After that, I turned, leaned back against my station, and watched Mo openly while I called my mom.
His silver gaze came to me.
And there it was.
A soft look from Mo.
Jeez, I so wanted to jump him.
I gave him a smile.
His eyes dropped to it,
but he didn’t smile back.
And again, I wanted to pounce on him.
Mom answered the phone.
“Lottie? Is everything okay?”
She sounded awake and alert, but not alarmed. Just awake and alert even though I knew I had to have woken her.
This was because she was the mother of a Rock Chick and the Queen of the Corvette Calendar. She had a lot of practice with being woken up in the middle of the night, needing to do it and be alert.
“Hey, Mom. Sorry to call late, but Carla turned her ankle bad coming off stage tonight. Mo had a look at it and thinks she needs to have it checked at the hospital. She needs someone to go relieve her babysitter until she gets home.”
“Mo?”
Shit.
Wrapped up in all that was going on, I not only forgot about dinner on Sunday, I forgot I’d told Jet about Mo coming, but not my mother.
And obviously my sister had left relaying that news to me.
“My, uh…” I gave Mo big eyes.
His dark eyebrows shot up.
Dark brows that went with the dark stubble he normally sported (except at times like now, right after his shower, when he’d shaved) and then there was dark hair on his arms.
This possibly meant dark hair on his chest, and other, better places, something I could not wait to discover.
My thoughts turned to the choice he’d given me at our first meeting of being in the room with him while he showered. Considering current events, that was a choice I no longer had.
And that was a crying shame.
But indisputably prudent.
“New boyfriend,” I finished, my voice kinda husky.
His lips twitched before his attention turned because Smithie was bowling through the door.
The bossman didn’t even look at me. He went direct to Carla, concern evident on his face.
God, I loved that guy.
“You have a new boyfriend?” Mom asked in my ear.
I focused on the task at hand.
“She has a what?” I heard boomed over the phone before I could answer.
Tex was awake.
Not a surprise.
Definitely a wildcard.
Tex had no kids. Tex’s history was a long story, and not much of it, until he met Indy Nightingale, was good. And one could say, considering after he met Indy he’d been shot, clubbed in the head, kidnapped and blew up a warehouse, that wasn’t good for him either.
Quiet Man: A Dream Man Novella Page 10