“I thought after your last raise you could quit.”
For a doctor, Jean sure wasn’t very circumspect. “Lower your voice,” Kenna admonished as they exited the elevator.
Jean grimaced. “Sorry. But seriously. Why can’t you quit?”
“Two and a half more years and Austin is going to graduate. College costs money.”
“Yeah, it does.” Jean sighed. “Well okay, read the e-mail tonight. Okay?”
“I will,” Kenna promised.
***
This was stupid. Why should her palms be sweaty? Kenna stood behind her desk chair, staring at her computer. Austin was asleep. She’d watched his wrestling match. He’d pinned his opponent. He credited his lucky socks.
She should have gone through her personal e-mail yesterday, but she hadn’t, she was too busy handling Rosalie’s. The woman was a mess and a half. So here she was, almost done with her own.
Almost.
She’d read the one that Jean had forwarded her. She understood why Jean liked him. He said he was an attorney. Jean wanted a guy who was her professional equal, and this guy said he was a partner in a law firm. That would appeal to her. But still, something didn’t ring true. Maybe it was the way he mentioned what kind of car he drove. It reminded Kenna too much of Harold’s son.
Then there were the four new e-mails responding to her profile. Well, two were new, two were repeats, and one was from SailorBoy69. Jean had questioned why Kenna had even had put herself on CaliSingles, and this was it. Knowing that out there in the cosmos some men found her attractive used to boost her self-esteem. She would read the e-mails, and they would make her smile. SailorBoy69’s was the only one she’d ever responded to, and look at the mess she was in.
Kenna was looking at her e-mail in-box like it was full of snakes. She’d told him not to respond. She’d meant it. Hadn’t she? Dammit, this panic attack was as bad as the first one she’d had. Shouldn’t she be past this?
“Suck it up, Wright, if you had really meant for him not to respond, you wouldn’t have sent him an e-mail, let alone two!”
She stomped to her kitchen and opened the top cabinet that housed the wine glasses.
“Dammit. Now he has me drinking alone again. Not a good sign.” She poured a glass of red wine. Well, at least it wasn’t tequila. The last time she drank tequila was four months ago when she had gotten a call from the sewer sucking slime ball with his latest excuse as to why he couldn’t pay child support. Like always, he was out of work, but she would bet any amount of money that he was supporting some stripper’s G-string. She hoped that was all, and that he hadn’t talked any woman into actually moving in with him because nobody deserved that type of attention.
Great, now she was thinking of Jaden, just the mindset she needed when getting ready to read another e-mail from the first man she’d found attractive since high school. Please say he hadn’t dared her again.
“Please, no more dares.”
Did she just whimper?
“Pull it together!” She slugged down a swallow of wine and choked.
This was not boding well. It was a sign. She should probably just delete the damn thing and not bother reading it.
Well, you can’t very well delete it while you’re standing in the kitchen, now can you? Get your ass back into the office.
She started to stomp into the other room, and then remembered that Austin was asleep upstairs. Normally being a mom was great, but when she felt like throwing a hissy fit, it really put a crimp in her style. She placed her glass on the desk, took a deep breath, and opened the e-mail.
Oh holy camoly, she was whimpering. She actually heard a whimper come out of her mouth. He said she suited him down to his bones. It made her want to melt.
With trembling fingers, she touched the rim of her wineglass and kept reading.
“His Grandmother?” she whispered. “His grandmother could write a letter of recommendation?”
She felt tears forming as she smiled. It was a lovely e-mail. It made her feel so warm inside.
He called you neurotic.
She sat up straighter and read that part of the e-mail again. Yep, he’d called her neurotic. But then she smiled. He said she was sexy.
She took another swallow of wine and found herself choking...again.
Fuck nugget!
“Dex, you’re a hard man to shake loose.”
But did she want to shake him loose? That was the question.
She sat down at the keyboard and started to type.
Dex,
I’m thinking that a letter of recommendation from your grandmother would be soooo slanted in your direction, so I’ll pass. But it’s good to know she’d write one for you.
Straight up, you’re scaring the snot out of me by saying we ‘fit.’ You don’t know me. Okay, the neurotic part is a gimme, but other than that, you don’t know me. Here’s a little info. My name is Kenna. I shouldn’t be telling you that, but you have a grandmother who loves you, so I think I should tell you my name.
When you said you wanted the correspondence to keep going and you’re interested in the long game, it soothed my soul and scared the crap out of me at the same time. Can we start as just friends, and see where things lead? I mean slow. I mean tortoise slow. I mean snail’s pace slow. Can you cope with that? Hell, what am I thinking? You probably can’t. Which is totally fine. I totally understand.
There is no need for you to respond.
- Kenna aka Poppy
She re-read what she’d typed and bit her nail.
God, she was talking out of both sides of her mouth. Did she want him to respond and go slow, or hope she didn’t hear from him again?
“I don’t know! God, I’m a basket case.” She looked at her empty glass. No help there.
To hell with it. She was who she was. Her mother called her a screwball, and she sure was earning her neurotic stripes. She pressed send, closed her laptop and headed up the stairs.
***
Dex had been disappointed when Poppy hadn’t immediately responded to his e-mail. Luckily there was more than enough to do to keep him occupied after being gone so long. But the first thing he did after starting the coffee the next morning, was to check his computer, and he did a fist pump.
This time it didn’t take him any time at all to come up with a reply. Dex pressed send and then picked up the phone to call his grandfather.
“It’s about time you called. I heard via the grapevine you got back yesterday.”
Dex shook his head. The old man was totally in the know. “You coming over tonight? Your grandmother misses you.”
“I was calling to see about making up that golf game we missed. We’ve got some down time coming to us. We can leave early today, but that would only give us time for nine holes.”
“You going to bring some of your buddies?”
“That was the plan.”
“Excellent. But my arthritis is acting up so I might need some extra strokes.”
“That’s bullshit. You just want to win money. I want to talk to Grandma Helen,” Dex demanded. He knew that his grandmother would tell him that his grandfather was just fine.
“She’s out in the backyard,” his grandfather immediately lied. At least, Dex was pretty damn sure it was a lie.
“See, it’s bullshit.” Dex loved his grandfather. The man was wily.
“I’ll set up a tee time. Is it for four?” Martin asked.
“I’m pretty sure, I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
He hung up the phone and smiled, then he called Hunter and Gray.
***
“Don’t hit the ball Son, swing through the ball.” Dex’s lips twitched when he heard his grandfather say those words to Hunter. How many times had he heard that exact same sentence throughout his adolescence?
Martin Evans threw another golf ball down on the grass. “Tee that up and try again. You’ll hit the green for sure this time.”
“I can’t hit another ball,” Hunte
r protested. He looked at Dex and Gray for assistance. They just grinned at their big friend.
“Suck it up and shoot again,” Dex told his friend.
“It’s called taking a Mulligan,” Martin explained. “You just start over, instead of trying to hit your other shot that went into the rough. Now this time don’t try to kill the ball, just swing through it. You have a natural swing. You’ll do great.”
Dex wasn’t surprised in the slightest when Hunter’s next ball went straight down the fairway and landed a few feet away from the green. Martin was a natural born teacher.
“Don’t get too cocky, you’re still going to end up buying the beer tonight,” Gray warned him.
“Nonsense. We agreed, Hunter and I would partner against the two of you,” Martin said as he grabbed the handle of his portable golf cart. “My arthritis is acting up, so you’re going to have to give me two more points for the nine holes. It should be four, but I’m sure Hunter will be able to make up for it.”
Dex smothered a grin. His grandfather needed extra handicap points like he needed a hole in the head. The man could outshoot almost any man at the club on the back nine. He and Gray were about to get their asses handed to them.
“Mr. Evans, if your arthritis is acting up, maybe we should have gotten an electric cart so you could have ridden,” Hunter suggested.
“Just need to stretch out my muscles, young man. Let’s move on ahead and talk about what club you should use when you get up toward the green. Should it be a nine iron, or a wedge? This will take some thought.”
Dex purposefully walked slower so that he could talk to Gray. “Have you heard anything about the ambassador’s granddaughters? How are they doing?”
“I wanted to ask you, how you were doing,” Gray said. “You and Aiden both seemed to take it pretty hard. Of course, you two were holding the girls in the helicopter.”
Dex looked down at the green grass under his feet, so different from the sand that he had trekked over just weeks before. Then he glanced sideways at his friend and boss. “I’ll be doing better when you answer my question,” he replied.
“I have a friend,” Gray paused. “Don’t ask me who or how, but suffice it to say they have connections, they told me what is going on.”
Dex stopped in the middle of the fairway, watching as his grandfather took out his pitching wedge to explain something to Hunter. “Tell me. Please tell that I’ll get to testify against her.”
Gray gave him a long look, and Dex realized what that meant. Fuck. The bitch was going to get away with assisting in her husband’s death.
“If you can’t give me that, at least tell me that she isn’t going to have anything to do with raising her daughters.”
Dex thought about that moment in the desert when little Clara Anders looked at her mother, begging to know where her daddy was, and that crazy blonde bitch had actually slapped her child and told her to shut up. Before anyone could blink, Dex had picked her up and cuddled her. But Noreen Anders had still been trying to get at her child, so Gray physically restrained her until the helicopters showed up.
“Here’s where it stands. Half of the people working the case still think it was Bill Anders who was doing the selling, but the other half belief it was the bitch from hell.”
“What about our reports?” Dex asked.
“This is the stuff you and I can’t and won’t ever know about, but the CIA bureau chief sat down with the ambassador and laid out all they did have, that wouldn’t necessarily stand up in a court of law, including our reports. The bureau chief even arranged for a child psychologist to meet with the girls. The ambassador was appalled. Besides the CIA, her father turned on her. The girls were taken from her. Their aunt and uncle will raise them in the US. I checked they’re good people.”
Of course, Gray checked.
“Tell me something really bad is going to happen to Crazy Noreen,” Dex pleaded.
“Crazy Noreen is going to be working with the bureau chief. He’s basically turned her into one of his operatives. He’s using the threat of your testimony as leverage. He’s got her convinced that she could be up on manslaughter charges for not helping you try to save her husband.”
That gave Dex a small amount of satisfaction, then he thought of something.
“Her first assignment is working in a village in Somalia for a year, gathering intel about pirates.”
“She’s the ambassador’s blood daughter, and he’s okay with this?” Dex hoped to hell he was.
“Yep. He’s a good man. He wrote letters of condolences to the four marines families. If she can help stop more of blood-letting, he’s for it.”
Dex looked at his lieutenant. It was amazing how connected and informed he was. He opened his mouth.
“I told you,” Gray said. “Don’t ask any questions of who and how I got this information.”
Dex shut his mouth and nodded.
“Now, just how hard a time are we going to have beating your granddad?” Gray asked.
“Just get your money out now, we’re going down,” Dex said.
Chapter Four
Kenna,
I can be as slow as a herd of snails travelling through peanut butter. See you said slow, and I didn’t even make a sexual innuendo because that would have been going fast.
Poppy, I don’t know what went on in your past, but if you need slow, and I get to spend some time laughing at my computer screen because of your attitude, I’m all for it. If there ever comes a time where you want to tell me about your past, I’m all ears. (Like a slow-moving elephant going up a hill.)
I lived with Grandma Helen and Grandpa Martin during the summers so it might not be a totally glowing letter of recommendation. She might have thrown in a few zingers about what a handful I was. Hearing that my words soothed your soul made me soar.
I believe in this. Let’s keep talking. We’re doing the right thing here, Kenna.
- Dex
Kenna threw up her hands.
This shit needed to stop, and it needed to stop now. She bit her lip as she re-read Dex’s e-mail. She couldn’t even think of him as SailorBoy anymore. He was Dex. She toggled over to the picture that had come with the original e-mail. He was so damned handsome. She stood up and moved across the room then picked up the wedding picture of her parents. Her father had been wearing his dress whites. He had short hair like Dex.
A Navy man.
Honorable.
That was the reason she had responded to him, and she hadn’t responded to any other man who had ever e-mailed SNMP.
Admit it, he’s hot as hell.
“Down girl!” she said to the empty room.
Kenna only had one lover in her entire life, and she’d had the bad judgement to get knocked up and marry him. All because she had thought he was the most handsome boy in school. She swore to herself years and years ago that if she ever broke up with her vibrator, it was going to be for a homely man. What was she thinking?
He’s funny.
He’s nice.
He says the nicest things!
“Three good reasons to question whether he’s for real, or if you’ve gone insane!”
Time to nip this in the bud.
She sat down at her computer.
Dex,
I am so sorry I ever responded to you. Thanks for being such a good guy, but this just isn’t going to work. You need to find someone else, someone else who will make you laugh. Trust me, you’d get sick of my attitude and neurosis. You need someone with less baggage. Think of it this way, you got away before you had a chance to be burned by the crazy chick. Who needs crazy, right?
Thank you so much for brightening up the last few weeks for me. It meant a lot. I’m shutting down my account now.
Good luck finding someone sane. You deserve it.
- Kenna
Kenna spent the next thirty minutes deleting her profile from the dating website. It should have been faster, but she went to google to make sure that she was doing everything
correctly so that every trace would be gone. She’d set up the profile a year and a half ago when she’d been feeling pretty good about herself. Austin had just turned fourteen, and her mom and Rosalie had pushed her to think about dating. So, she had put herself out there. They’d been right, men had been sending her responses ever since she had uploaded.
She got up and took down a wine glass and poured herself a half glass of a nice red. She looked at her fingers, then her hands. For just a moment, she imagined her hands running through Dex’s hair. Then she gave a sad laugh.
“Look at them, you don’t even have the nails painted,” she said to herself.
She took a sip of wine and then, carrying the glass, went to look in the hall mirror. It wasn’t a good night to be looking at herself. Her hair was in a messy ponytail, no make-up, and she was tired. Yesterday had been a Rosalie day, so she hadn’t gotten much sleep.
Her cell phone vibrated. She always turned off the ringer when Austin was asleep. She saw that it was Rosalie. That was odd. She rarely called her on her days off, and never this late in the evening.
“What’s wrong?” Rosalie demanded before Kenna could even say hello.
“What do you mean? Nothing’s wrong. Why are you calling?”
“I just got the notification that you took down your profile on CaliSingles. What are you thinking? You were in the top ninety percentile for hits in your age bracket.”
“Rosalie, what are you talking about?”
“I had Buddy checking your stats. You actually responded to someone. It was fabulous. What are you doing stopping now?”
“My stats?” Kenna looked at the wine sloshing in her glass and set it on the kitchen counter. “Rosalie, come clean immediately,” she demanded of her boss. “What do you mean stats? How did you know I sent someone an e-mail on the site? What did you have your grandson do?”
“I had Buddy purchase the company so we could check up on you. It turned out to be a wonderful investment.”
“Let me get this right, you bought a company so you could invade my privacy?” Kenna asked incredulously.
Her Devoted HERO (Black Dawn Book 2) Page 4