Spark (Boosted Hearts Book 4)

by Sherilee Gray

Okay, probably not a good idea to put those on him. Dex carried him up the stairs, found his bedroom and another set of pj’s. He’d never dressed a kid before, but despite the squirming and giggling, which ended up making Dex laugh as well ’cause the kid was cute, he got the job done. And Hugh was right, this one most definitely had his uncle Joe’s sense of humor.

  Dex carried him down the hall to where he could hear Hattie talking to Gracie in the bathroom, and apparently, the scene of the poo incident—

  Okay, yeah, Hattie was right, it was everywhere. Like Hattie had stood in the middle of the room, aimed Gracie’s little butt at the floor and turned in circles.

  He glanced up at Hattie and winced. She had some on her cheek.

  Gracie was now cleaned up and dressed, and Hattie held out the baby to Dex. He quickly moved Brody to his shoulders and took the clean and smiling bundle Hattie handed to him.

  She started cleaning up.

  “Um, babe,” he said.

  She was busy gathering up towels.

  “Hattie?”

  “Hmm?” she said glancing at him.

  “Sweetness, you got a little…” He pointed to her cheek. “You’ve got some, ah…on your face.”

  Hattie stilled. “No. No I haven’t,” she said, voice deceptively calm.

  “Yeah, baby, you do. On your cheek.”

  “No. Dex, please tell me you’re joking.”

  Dex winced.

  Hattie took a slow measured breath and looked in the mirror. “Oh God,” she whispered when she got a look at herself. She turned back to him. “Dex, I have baby poo on my face.”

  The look on hers, the note to her voice, it was too much. And the laugh that bubbled up inside him took him off guard. There was no holding it back. Soon he was laughing so hard he was giving his abs a workout. Brody thought Dex laughing was hilarious and joined in. Gracie didn’t seem to care and grinned up at him.

  Milly appeared at the door, Connor’s hand in hers. “What’s going on?”

  “Poo!” Brody said.

  Milly’s gaze moved over Hattie, finding it instantly, and her hand flew to her mouth, trying to stifle her giggles. Connor started chanting “poo” with his younger brother.

  Hattie grumbled, then grinned at them all and started laughing as well, and when she did, Dex’s heart did a weird somersault.

  When they had all pulled themselves together, Hattie cleaned herself up, and Dex helped her put all the kids to bed. Milly was allowed her light on for twenty minutes to read, but the other three were out pretty much as soon as their little heads hit their pillows. They’d had a busy night.

  Dex was in the living room when Hattie finally came back down after checking on Milly.

  “She’s asleep,” she said and plonked down on the couch.

  “Drink?”

  She nodded.

  Dex grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge—Hugh definitely owed them one after that—and handed one to Hattie. “You did good,” he said and took a seat beside her.

  “I sucked,” she said and sipped her drink. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t shown up.” She turned more fully toward him. “Were you looking for Hugh?”

  Dex shook his head. “You left again, Hattie.”

  Her gaze dropped to his mouth. “I needed to get to work.”

  He frowned.

  “You were asleep. You looked peaceful and I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “You snuck off and vanished for two days.” Why was he making such a big deal out of this? It wasn’t like they’d said anything more would happen beyond that night. But he realized he wanted more than that one night. Who was he kidding? He’d known he wanted more than one night with this woman the moment he laid eyes on her.

  “I didn’t vanish,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “I was here or I was home.”

  Shay’s office was out the back of the house. She’d told him Hugh had built it for her once her business grew.

  “You wanted me to come after you, Hattie?” he asked, because fucked if he knew. It wasn’t like he was an expert when it came to relationships. He’d been with Chloe for a couple of years, but a lot of that time he’d been deployed.

  He wasn’t a big talker either, and when he was home, a lot of the time he’d felt lost and confused with her. She’d wanted things from him, but she wouldn’t just say what they were. She wanted him to figure it out. Thought he should just know. He was a black and white kind of guy. If someone wanted something from him, he needed them to say it.

  “Yes, I suppose I did,” she said.

  Hattie looked up at Dex and willed him to kiss her. She hadn’t realized it until he asked, but, yes, she had wanted him to come after her because she knew she shouldn’t go after him. How could she when she’d decided she needed to focus on work, on her new career, on proving her controlling parents wrong?

  And after the upsetting call from her mother that morning, she was more determined than ever to make it on her own.

  Fidgeting with the label on her beer, she forced herself to share, because Dex was a great guy and she didn’t want him to think she was playing games with him. “In my family, you don’t ask for what you want. You do what’s expected.” She glanced up at him, then back down. “Honestly, I’ve never gone after a guy. I’ve dated the men who asked me, men my parents chose for me, who they deemed acceptable. I’m used to playing their games, watching, waiting. The first thing I ever had the courage to go after was this, my life here, my job with Shay. So I’m sorry, if my behavior is…confusing. Doing things on my terms is all kind of new to me, but I’m working on it.”

  Dex took her chin and tilted her head back, his gaze locking with hers. “Your family sounds as fucked as mine,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “My father was a gambler, left me and my mom when he owed too many people too much money. He fathered three other sons to three other women and fucked off and left them all as well. My mom worked long hours. I was alone a lot. That’s why I don’t talk much, I guess. After Mom died, I got to know one of my brothers. Let him get close and he fucked me over, so yeah, I get it. Family can be tough.”

  That was the longest sentence Dex had ever said to her.

  “I’m sorry. That sucks,” she said, but she didn’t try and console him. He didn’t want her pity, like she didn’t want his.

  His rough-skinned fingers curled tighter around his beer bottle, and he dipped his chin.

  “So you’re a Marine?” she said, changing the subject away from his family since she could see it wasn’t something he liked to discuss. But she also wanted to know everything she could about this man, despite knowing she should keep her distance.

  “Yeah.”

  “How long were you on active duty?”

  “Ten years.”

  “What made you decide to stop?”

  He shrugged his big shoulders. “Got injured bad enough I had to walk away.” His jaw tightened.

  “Do you miss it?”

  “Sometimes.”

  While he was answering her questions, she was going to keep asking them. She was hungry for any tidbit about the big, silent man sitting beside her. “Why did you come here? Lucy said you guys barely knew each other before you accepted the job with Hugh.”

  “Family shit,” he said, that jaw getting tight again.

  She was being nosy, pushing, but she couldn’t stop herself, a trait her parents had tried very hard to squash. “Is that why you listed Hugh as your contact with the Navy, not your brother?”

  Dex looked taken aback for a moment, then obviously figured Lucy had filled her in. “I listed Hugh because I didn’t have anyone else at the time.”

  That made no sense. Hattie frowned, and he didn’t miss her confusion.

  “My brother moved in with me and my girlfriend, and while I was deployed, she decided she liked him more. They put my shit in storage and changed the locks. So the next time I was shipped off, I listed Hugh instead.”

  He
said it calmly, but there was no missing the pain in his eyes. Hattie’s chest ached for him. That kind of betrayal was not something you could easily get past. She rested her hand over Dex’s, most definitely surprised and totally ignoring how much she hated the idea of him with another woman, because thoughts like that were completely insane. “You still love her.”

  Dex jolted a little. “No. And I don’t hate her either. But whatever we had, it wasn’t that—love—not if it was so easy to toss aside. She never really knew me, and I sure as hell never really knew her.”

  Relief washed through her, and she chose to ignore that as well.

  She nodded, because she kind of understood. She knew all about betrayal. She had parents who turned on her as soon as she did something they didn’t like. “You let them both in and they betrayed you. That’s what hurt most.”

  “Yeah. I mean, we sat down after I was injured, after my last deployment, tried to build some bridges, but it’s hard, you know?”

  “I get that. You wouldn’t believe the underhand tactics my parents pulled to bend me to their will. I understand betrayal.”

  His gaze grew even more intense. “I’m sorry, Hattie.”

  She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. She quickly changed the subject back to Dex. “So you were injured overseas? Is that how you got your scars?”

  His throat worked before he spoke. “Yeah…there was a bomb. We lost a couple of guys.” Pain moved through his eyes, and she wished she’d never brought it up. Seeing him in pain, God, it actually hurt her as well.

  Suddenly, she didn’t want to talk anymore. She didn’t want to think about any of that, about her family, about what could have happened to Dex or how lucky he was to be there, sitting beside her.

  No. Right then, all she wanted was Dex’s lips on hers.

  “Being out on your own can’t be easy after what you went through with your folks. I’m here if you need anything. You just gotta ask,” he said, his heated gaze moving over her, and there was no missing the hunger in his eyes.

  God, what was this thing between them? She hadn’t felt quite right since she walked out of his apartment. She’d missed him. How was that possible? She barely knew Dex, but for some reason, she felt the opposite.

  Like, for instance, he’d just told her to ask for what she wanted. He meant that. Dex didn’t jabber on about nothing. He only said what needed to be said. He frowned often. He sometimes found people confusing, their emotions hard to figure out. He preferred the people in his life to say what was on their mind, not play games, not drop hints, just flat-out say what they wanted.

  So she did. “I want you to kiss me,” she said, because that was what she desperately wanted.

  He grunted, the sound very male and somehow extremely sexy, and slid his hand up the side of her neck to cup her cheek. Tension vibrated through her as she waited, then finally he leaned in and pressed his mouth against hers.

  And like the other times they’d kissed, Hattie lost herself in it. She was alive, on fire, her nerve endings sparking through her body. When Dex touched her, when he kissed her, the world stopped spinning.

  She’d heard of this, read about it, this kind of chemistry, but she never knew it truly existed, not until Dex kissed her the first time.

  Sliding her arms around his neck, she tried to get closer. Dex read her perfectly and lifted her up and onto his lap so she was straddling him, the same way she had when they’d had sex.

  A shiver moved through her and she pressed closer, moaning when his thick, blunt fingers slid into her hair and lightly fisted. “How can it be so good?” she said against his lips.

  “Fucked if I know, but I can’t get enough of you, Hattie.”

  His low, rough words stoked the fire low in her belly. She wanted him, right there, right then—

  The sound of the door being unlocked somehow penetrated Hattie’s lust-filled brain and she quickly pulled away. She felt Dex’s fingers flex against her hips like he wanted her to stay right where she was.

  She’d just climbed off his lap when Adam and Lucy walked in. Adam had a small smirk curling his lips. Lucy, on the other hand, was full-out grinning, so wide Hattie thought it had to hurt.

  “Well, what do we have here?” she said, hand to her rounded belly as she walked to the closest chair and sat down. “We thought we’d pop in, see how you were doing with the kids, but I see you already had help.”

  The smirk vanished from Adam’s lips. “No, we’ve just been to see your doctor and were told you need to rest.”

  She waved a hand. “I’m fine.”

  Adam, looking like a man defeated, sat on one of the footrests in front of her. “Foot, brat,” he said.

  She did what he asked, and he slid off her shoe and started massaging her puffy-looking foot. His wife’s eyes rolled back in her head.

  When she finally got over the initial bliss of her foot rub, she aimed her green eyes at Dex. “It was nice of you to come and help my girl.”

  Dex grunted, not taking the bait.

  Lucy’s gaze slid to Hattie and she grinned, eyes sparkling with that we-will-talk-about-this-later look of hers. “Any trouble?”

  “No, no trouble. Dex came looking for Hugh, saw I needed help, and pitched in. He hasn’t been here long.” She was overexplaining, wasn’t she? Going by the stupid grin back on Lucy’s face, she so was.

  “I like this,” Lucy said, looking smug as hell. “This is good. Couldn’t have worked out more perfect if I’d tried.”

  “You did try,” Adam muttered.

  “Excuse me?” Hattie said, giving her friend a hard look.

  “You two.” She motioned between Hattie and Dex. “My big broody cousin and my best friend. I knew you guys had a little something Christmas Day…”

  “It’s not like that,” Hattie said, not entirely sure why. What she and Dex did was no one’s business, but it was more than that. She didn’t want Lucy to get the wrong idea, to think she and Dex were more than they were when Hattie couldn’t have that. Not yet. She had too much to do.

  She had to prove that she’d made the right decision, moving here, starting again, not only to her parents.

  But to herself as well.

  Chapter 7

  Could Hattie have denied there was something between them any faster?

  Dex glanced over at her as she climbed into the truck beside him. He’d told Hugh and Shay he’d take Hattie home—since they were still waiting on a part for her car to fix it—but really he wanted to take her to his apartment and spend some time alone with the perfect woman beside him.

  “In my family, you don’t ask for what you want. You do what’s expected.”

  She’d told him she’d never gone after a guy she’d wanted, that she hadn’t gone after anything until she made the decision to move here. That she was used to game playing, watching, waiting for shit to happen.

  He didn’t want her to feel that way with him. He wasn’t one of the assholes she’d dated in the past. He wanted her to tell him when she wanted or needed something from him. Because he’d give it to her, whatever it was. Any fucking thing. He wanted to be the first man she felt comfortable enough to do that with.

  Shit, he wanted too many things when it came to this woman. More than he should after knowing her such a short time.

  “You coming to my place, sweetness?” he asked, because she might have been learning to go after what she wanted, to ask for it, but he wasn’t going to risk that she might not.

  She glanced at him and a small smile curled her lips. “I’d like that.”

  Dex’s heart did another one of those weird somersaults.

  He didn’t know what was happening between them. He just knew he wanted more of it, needed more. She made everything—fuck, just…better. He missed his old place and the guys from his unit, but when Hattie was with him, all that became background. Became bearable.

  It didn’t take long to reach the garage, and he pulled into the parking lot, shut off the engine, and turne
d to her. “You gonna vanish on me again, Hattie?”

  Her gaze dipped to his mouth. “How about I wake you before I leave?”

  “Appreciate that. I’ll be giving you a ride home as well.”

  “Okay, sounds good,” she said, that sweet smile front and center.

  Dex didn’t want to make the same mistakes with Hattie as he had with Chloe. Chloe hadn’t asked for what she wanted from him, but he hadn’t either. In that, Dex and Hattie were both learning.

  This thing between them felt too big, too important, to leave to chance. So he made himself say what had been on his mind. “I like you, Hattie. A lot. I want to get to know you, talk more, spend time together like we did tonight. Take you out on an actual date.” When he finished, she said nothing, just stared at him across the dark cab. Her eyes were wide, a look in them Dex did not like, not one bit. “What is it, sweetness?”

  She chewed on the side of her lip for several long seconds. “I’m sorry. I think that maybe I should go home tonight after all.”

  What the fuck? “Hattie—”

  “I just remembered, I have some work to do…” She took out her phone and started tapping.

  So much for being honest. He’d spooked her. Again. “We don’t have to go on a date. It was a stupid idea.” Now he sounded panicked and desperate.

  That’s because you are.

  The idea of Hattie walking away from him hit him in a way that he shouldn’t have been feeling after such a short time knowing her. But it did, it hit fucking hard.

  “It’s not that…I just…I need to go home.” She smiled and it was false as hell, then climbed out of the truck. “My Uber’s five minutes away.”

  “Hattie…”

  She shook her head, the fake smile dropping. “Can we not talk about this? I’m just going to wait for my ride.”

  “What did I do?” he rasped.

  “You did nothing. You’re…you’re…” She swallowed thickly. “I just, I need to go home.”

  She wasn’t going to tell him, but she looked panicked. His declaration had freaked her out. “At least let me drive you home,” he bit out.

  “It’s fine. They’re almost here. You don’t need to wait with me.”