“They’re nice guys.”
Dad slammed his glass on the table, splashing the liquid over the edge. “Nice doesn’t pay the rent.”
“Stop this, you two.” Mom pulled a Kleenex from a nearby box and wiped up the spill. “Why this interest in Fury? You’ve never been there before.” Worry creased her forehead.
I turned away from Dad’s scowl. “I never had a reason to go there, and then a development opportunity came up.”
“It’s a dying town, I hear.” Mom walked past me to throw away the wet tissue. She bumped my arm, and I silently screamed. There was no way I’d react visibly to the pain. It was enough that she was worried about Dad; I wouldn’t add to her troubles.
“It’s the perfect commuter town for Boulder. I met some of the residents, and I really like them.”
“Liking them isn’t important. It doesn’t affect the end game, Decker.”
I ignored his comment. After a few drinks, Dad spewed nothing but vitriol.
Mom ignored him too. She took me in from head to toe, her smile warm and bright. “You look different.”
“He’s sober,” Dad piped in.
I wanted to lash out at him. He was a shitty role model when it came to responsible drinking, but like Mom, I let it go and focused on her. Some fights weren’t worth the effort.
“What do you mean I look different?” She always had that scary sixth sense that mothers had, and I wondered whether she knew I’d had an accident.
“I’m not sure yet.” She cupped my cheek with motherly love. “I’ll tell you when I figure it out.”
Chapter 7
Hannah
A song sang in my heart. The sun had set, but everything around me seemed bright and fresh.
Mom was in the kitchen making spaghetti. Even she seemed renewed.
“It looks like you're feeling better,” I said.
She snapped her head around toward me. “No, I’ve got the shakes. I’ve puked three times today. My skin looks like I have hepatitis. And I’ve totally screwed up your life.”
I set my purse on the old worn table. “Come here.” I held my arms open and waited for her to walk into them, and she did. “You can do this, Mom.” I gave her a long, hard squeeze.
The truth was, she could generally do a few days. She was always remorseful when sober and angry when she slipped back into old habits.
Mom pushed away and went back to the stove where she dumped a package of pasta into the boiling water.
“What’s got you looking so happy?” She stirred the spaghetti until it wilted into the water.
I glanced at my reflection in the window. My eyes were no longer puffy, and there was some pink to my cheeks. “Wait here.” I raced to my car to grab the flowers. It had been a long time since flowers sat in the middle of our table. I turned them around to see whether there was a better, fuller side, but the vase was beautiful from every angle.
“You brought me flowers?” Mom’s eyes lit up, and her face brightened with a smile. Happiness looked good on her.
“I’m sharing my flowers with you.” I leaned in and sniffed at the beautiful blooms.
Mom turned back to stir the sauce. “Who are they from?”
I told her the story of Dex coming into the diner injured. “He’s super nice and really cute.”
“The not-so-bright one that crashed in the rain?” She gave me a haven’t-you-learned-anything look. “At least he has some class, but remember, after the flowers always comes heartbreak.”
“Not all men are bad, Mom.” It took a lot for me to say that because lately, my jerk-to-nice ratio was tipping toward jerk. “Just because you found the one tarnished penny in the bunch doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep looking for the shiny coin.”
“Where do you come up with that stuff? Last week you told me I was a couch potato in the gravy boat of life.”
I was surprised she remembered. “I like metaphors.”
“Okay, but you’re the only one who understands what in the hell you’re saying.”
“Not true.” The legs of the chair scraped across the linoleum floor and creaked when I took a seat. “All I was saying was, spending your day on the couch is not productive. It doesn’t make your life any better.”
Mom pounded the sauce spoon on the counter, sending a splatter of red specks onto the dingy white wall. “My life is over. All I have is Judge Judy and carbohydrates.”
This was where it all began. First the moment of sober reflection, followed by the pity party, chased by a bottle of hard liquor, and then concluding with whatever pain pills she could wrangle from her doctor.
“Do you blame me?” It was a question I asked myself all the time. Could I have done something different? I had a look that men gravitated to. Many girls would consider that a blessing. For me, it had been a curse until I figured out how to use it. Then it became a catastrophe because flirting was different from consent.
Mom reached into the cabinet above the stove. I held my breath and prayed she wouldn’t drag down a bottle. Work was tiring enough, but the daily searches and seizures were exhausting. At some point in the past year, I’d become the parent, and I was completely unqualified.
I exhaled loudly when I saw the colander. Could it be that things were finally looking up?
“I have a date tomorrow night.”
She turned and focused on the flowers. “With the diner boy?”
“Yes. His name is Dex.”
“Where’s he taking you?” This was my old mom sneaking past the fog.
I rose and grabbed two plates from the cupboard. “I’m meeting him at the Dushanbe Teahouse in Boulder.” I dished up the drained spaghetti, and Mom dumped a scoop of sauce on each plate. We plopped into opposite seats at the table.
Her brows lifted, and I waited for the smile that never came. “He can’t pick you up?”
I thought she’d be excited that I met someone, but instead, she fixated on a meaningless detail. “He works in Boulder, and it makes sense to meet him there.” There was no way I’d let her lack of excitement ruin my date. The Dushanbe Teahouse was a super cool place to go and not someplace I could afford on my own.
“Don’t settle, Hannah. Expect more and get more.” It was good advice if I’d actually seen it applied, but Mom was a do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do person.
“You should get out more. Maybe date.”
She twirled the pasta around her fork. “The last time I dated, it didn’t work out well for you.”
“He didn’t rape me, Mom. He just put his fingers …”
“Hannah, please don’t say it. I can’t bear it.” She dropped her fork and pulled her hands to her ears. “I was supposed to protect you. It was my job to make sure you were safe.”
I really hated it when she played the martyr. She lowered her hands when I swatted at them. “You know what, Mom? Stop being the damn victim. I’m the one that got fingered by the asshole. You’re the one that stopped him. You did protect me, and then you shut down and gave up.”
“I lost my job.” She shoved her plate forward as if she were finished after the first bite.
“Yes, you did, but you could do something else. It’s not my dream to schlep plates and pour coffee, but it puts pasta on the table.” I shoved her plate back toward her. “Eat before you have bigger problems than a pickled liver and a bad attitude.” I wanted to crawl under the table and hide. I was often snarky, but I was rarely disrespectful to my elders.
“Your mouth is going to get you into trouble.”
“It already has.” It was my mouthing off at Cameron that got me a fist to the face, or so he’d claimed. That purple cheek had gone unnoticed by Mom because she’d been in a particularly low place. Drunk and passed out on the carpet for days, to be specific.
“I can’t stay here and take care of you forever. I have dreams too, Mom.”
“Then leave.”
These were the times I wanted to throw my hands in the air and scream that I quit, but I couldn’t quit on the
ones I loved. “That’s not what families do. You fought for me, I’ll fight for you, but you have to fight for yourself too. No more booze or pills. When you feel desperate, take a walk or come to the diner and have some pie.”
“You can’t make enough pie to fill my desperate moments.”
“Maybe not. All I know is that you have to find something else to fill your void.”
“You quit school for me. What’s filling your void?” But she went back to eating, which was a victory.
“I work, I have friends, and now I have a date.” After thinking I would never find the right guy, I was finally filled with hope.
A loud thud came from the front door. When I opened it, I found my sister standing on the stoop with tears in her eyes.
“I lost my key,” she cried.
I was shocked to see Stacey standing in front of me. She was supposed to be cramming for her finals, not knocking at the door.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I stepped aside so she could enter.
Stacey yanked a big duffle through the door and plopped it in the middle of the living room.
It wasn’t the type of bag someone brought for a short stay. She was back for good.
“I’m homesick.”
My intuition told me there was a story behind her sudden appearance and far more to it than those two simple words. “What’s going on, Stacey?”
She pulled me in for a hug. “Nothing, I just miss you guys.” She held her nose high. “Is that spaghetti I smell?” And she was off to the kitchen. Stacey had the evasion techniques of a ninja and the stubbornness of a bull.
Chapter 8
Hannah
The damn owl clock didn’t move fast enough. I’d checked it a dozen times, and the hour still hadn’t passed. My throat vibrated with a growl.
The door chimed, and in walked the gang minus Mona and Marty. When it was all six of them together, they piled into the big corner booth. Today they took up the smaller table in the center of the diner.
“It’s French toast Friday,” Ana said with joy bubbling from her pores.
I brought both pots of coffee to the table: decaf for the breastfeeding Ana and fully loaded for everyone else.
“Are you all having the special?”
“Yes,” Ryker said. “Can you put in the order and come back? There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Once I slapped the order onto the wheel at the kitchen window, I returned to the table. I had no idea what he wanted to talk about. Maybe he was going to yell at me for leaving alone at night too. I’d never had a big brother, and since I’d had a major crush on Ryker, I certainly didn’t want him to take on that role. Honestly, it was hard to look at him as anything but a disappointment.
He pulled a chair from a nearby table and slid it toward the group. Anything that required I sit down couldn’t be good. I plunked my butt into the seat and waited for them to ruin my day.
They all looked at me like I’d grown a horn out of my forehead.
Grace broke the silence. “That guy you met the other night here…the one who crashed his bike?” She scanned the crowd in the booth. “Well…that’s Decker.”
My head turned from side to side while I analyzed everyone’s expressions. Silas and Ryker waited silently for a reaction. The girls gave me an are-you-dense look.
“Wait.” I leaned forward and elbowed the table. “Do you mean your Decker, as in your long-lost brother?” It couldn’t be. He was so different from Silas and Ryker. To start a list of dissimilarities, he was nice, and he was put together in a way they could never be. “He said his name was … oh, my God. His name is Dex.” He’d obviously flown under their radar by using that name.
I reflected back on Wednesday night, trying to bring his image into my mind. I looked at the brothers. “He has the Savage eyes.”
Ryker ignored my observation. He was on a mission, and Ryker never strayed when he was focused. “We set up a meeting. Never expected he’d come to town to check the place out in advance.”
“He’s a Savage. He pays attention to details,” Silas added.
The brothers argued a minute over who Decker favored and discussed what attributes were definitely Savage-born ones. The girls chatted about the good and bad traits he might have. I got dizzy trying to follow the conversations.
I cleared my throat. “As much as I’d like to sit here while you argue over your brother, I can’t. What do you need to talk to me about?”
“Right.” Ryker laid his hand on my shoulder. The man hadn’t ever touched me, except that one time he pushed me from the booth and I landed flat on my ass on the hard tile floor, and in a way, this gentle touch was just as shocking and forceful. “I need you to help us.”
I sat back, forcing his hand to drop away. “What do you want from me?”
Ryker and Silas whispered back and forth, but it was Silas who spoke up. “We tracked him to a business in Boulder. We went to talk to his family firm about finding a broker to finance the development of Fury. We were just feeling him out.” Silas’s voice cracked, and he took a sip of coffee.
“And?” They still hadn’t told me what they wanted, but it was my experience that anything needing a long lead-in was never good.
“We don’t think he knows he’s adopted.”
I slid back, making the metal legs of the chair screech against the floor. “And you want me to tell him?”
Ryker rolled his eyes. “No. That’s not what we want. We just want you to feel him out,” he said. “We don’t really know what to do next. I want to tell him, but Silas believes that if Decker is really happy, maybe we should let him be and not disrupt his life. So I just want to know if he’s happy. I want to know if he’s really better off where he is. Will you do that for me?”
Ryker stared at me with those Savage blue eyes. All three men had them, and months ago their appeal might have worked on me, but after the Cameron incident, I was cautious. Especially when men asked anything of me. Maybe overly so, but I didn’t want to get pulled into any more messes.
“Order up,” the cook called. I pushed the chair into its place by the nearby table and rushed to claim the four specials.
I never gave Ryker an answer, and I wasn’t sure that I would. I knew how important family was, and I wanted to help him, but what he was asking me to do didn’t feel right. It was kind of like lying by omission. I knew something about Decker that he didn’t know about himself. Was it my place to enlighten him?
For the next hour, I fussed over the counter and stayed far away from the Savages in the corner. When they left, Ryker approached me alone. “He told us about your date. I’m not asking you to sneak into his bank account or take photos of his contact list. This isn’t espionage. I just want to know if he’s in a good place in his life. Okay?”
The sincerity in those damn blue eyes melted my resistance. I nodded my head. What choice did I have? I was going on this date to have fun and get to know the man. If, along the way, he told me he was happy, what harm would it do to share that with my friends?
I’d keep what I knew about Decker to myself. If I came clean about the truth, it would be like dropping a bomb on our date. I wasn’t ready to destroy what I hadn’t had a chance to create. I had no choice but to keep my mouth shut.
Did being anxious mean I was excited…or fearful? I tried to calm my racing heart as I pulled onto Thirteenth Street into the one remaining parking spot. That seemed lucky even though the street name sounded like a bad omen.
I yanked down the sun visor and looked into the mirror at my bloodshot eyes. I hadn’t slept much last night, thinking of seeing Decker again. This was my first real date in a long time. But was it a date? The invitation sat on the passenger seat next to me. Nowhere did it say date. Had I misinterpreted his meaning? Maybe this was simply a thank you for letting him in.
That would be ironic, since the truth was, I’d let him into more than the diner. I let him into my head. The damn man consumed my thoughts. No one el
se had been able to break past my protective barriers, but he did. I’d been wrapped in yellow caution tape since that day in the diner parking lot. The tight grip of fear seemed to evaporate the minute I opened the door to the possibility of something with Decker.
When I arrived at the hostess stand, Decker wasn’t anywhere in sight. The woman offered to seat me since there was a reservation under his last name, but I declined. I preferred to wait and be seated together.
The interior was beautiful. Intricately painted columns held up a work-of-art ceiling. While I waited, I read the history of the building. The Teahouse was constructed in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. It was a gift to Boulder to serve as a symbol of friendship. Which seemed the perfect place to get to know Decker.
I felt him before I saw him. The air crackled with energy. Dressed in a pair of black jeans and a matching long-sleeved cotton shirt, he looked more bad boy than boardroom.
In the time it took him to reach me, I second-guessed everything from my dress to my lip-gloss.
“You came.” He said it like he expected me to be a no-show. Was he insane?
“You invited me. Of course, I came.” It was hard to pull my eyes from his face, but I forced them to his injured arm. “How’s the road rash?”
“You were right. It hurt like hell yesterday, but it’s better today. I changed the bandage. Not pretty to look at, but it’s healing.” He placed his palm on the small of my back and led me the few feet to the hostess stand.
The girl behind the podium lit up like a street lamp, but her smile was for him only. “Decker, it’s so good to see you again. Do you want your normal table?” She slowly turned her feline face to me, and I swore invisible claws gouged out my eyes.
Decker’s whole demeanor changed. His hand dropped to his side. An immediate frost chilled the surrounding air. “Cancel the reservations,” he snapped.
The catty chick at the stand stood with her mouth hanging open. “But you always—”
“Cancel it.” His voice resonated through the entry.
Delivering Decker Page 5