“Hank,” she whispered, her voice husky, accent thicker. “I think you should go now.”
Disappointment whipped through him, quickly smothered by reason. Things were ten times more complicated than before and being with her had been damned convoluted then. He needed time to sort through the major bombshell the stork had dropped into his world tonight.
Hank stepped back, needing distance from her in more ways than one. He’d meant it when he said he would be here for her and her son during the surgery. He owed his friend—and he owed her.
The rest, he would figure out later, back at his place while soaking in his hot tub with a beer. “I’ll be here at nine to take you to the baby’s appointment.”
She tugged at the collar of her loose tank top. “How did you know he has another appointment tomorrow?”
For a self-indulgent second, he let his eyes linger on the curve of her breasts under the silky cotton, her slim thighs hugged by black leggings. “You left the slip from the doctor’s office under a magnet on the fridge. Some kind of early registration work at the hospital, right? He has surgery the day after tomorrow?”
“Yes to all, but Hank, this is my son, my life. I can handle it on my own.”
“Yes, you can.” And that was one of the things he admired about Gabrielle, her independence. God, he was so screwed. “But you don’t have to.”
* * *
The next morning, Gabrielle hitched the diaper bag over her shoulder, grabbing an extra receiving blanket at the last second. She was seriously scattered this morning. It was tough enough getting out the door with a baby, but leaving a half hour earlier than expected was darn near impossible.
Still, she was determined to go before Hank showed up. His sudden arrival last night, his words, his touch—just the sound of his voice—had tipped her world upside down. The twisted sheets and coverlet on her bed attested to how he’d plagued her dreams. First, he’d been wearing a mask, dark and mysterious with blues music and fog wrapping around him. Then she’d been the one in disguise, but her mask took on a more sensual tone, her clothes and inhibitions falling away… .
Nerves tingling to the roots of her hair, she turned away from her brass bed. In her dreams, she’d spent the entire night there with him. She did not need more time with him today, especially not when she was so emotional over her son. She would just leave Hank a message on his voice mail once she got in her car.
She slipped the floral baby sling over her neck and settled her sleeping son inside. Today’s blood work would bring them one step closer to having the surgery behind them. Two days from now, her son would have the procedure and life could return to normal.
Whatever normal was anymore.
She backed out the door, working her key down the locks. Hank’s warning about the neighborhood, about providing for her child, tugged at her conscience. She turned around and pulled up short.
Hank sat on her top step. No Top Gun flight jacket today. He wore jeans and a button-down, loafers without socks. Old-school aviator glasses rested on top of his head without making a dent in his close-cropped brown hair. He had a casual air that worked for him without even trying.
How did he pull that off this early in the morning?
“Uh, Hank, what are—”
He held up a hand, and he gripped his iPhone in the other hand as he…played a game? The squawk, squeak and explosion noises coming from the handheld increased until a final blast and victory tune filled the morning. Hank didn’t fist pump, but he smiled before tucking away his phone and reaching for his coffee beside him.
Shoving to his feet, he dusted off his jeans and slid his sunglasses down from his head and in place over his eyes. “Are you ready?”
She was so jangled from the explicit images of her dreams that she felt them simmer through her even now. She couldn’t seem to draw a breath, as if just having him here stole all the air around her. Fighting for some distance, she shot him a level gaze and hoped her emotions didn’t show.
“How long have you been there, and how did you get past the front gate?” She eyed the wrought-iron entry at the top of the alley. Still locked up tight. She looked back at Hank. “Well?”
“I’ve been waiting for twenty-five minutes to go with you to the doctor’s appointment. As for how I got in, suffice it to say I’ve made my point about security.” He drained his coffee cup with a final long swallow.
“Fine, you’re right.” She sighed and yanked off the diaper bag. She thrust it against his chest. “Make yourself useful and carry this.”
Grabbing the handrail, she started down the stairs.
“Yes, ma’am.” He laughed softly, his footsteps sounding behind her.
His laughter taunted and turned her inside out all at once. God, he made her mad at the way he assumed he could thrust himself into her life, and she was even madder at herself for the leap of excitement over finding him waiting for her. “My car’s parked in a lot a block away.”
“I have my car right out front. I’ll drive.” He took her keys from her hand and opened the wrought-iron gate.
“You don’t have an infant seat.”
“Wrong. I do.” He palmed her waist, guiding her past the shopkeeper sweeping beads and other Mardi Gras tokens littering the sidewalk.
“It’s not even eight in the morning. Did the Renshaw-Landis influence make a baby seat appear in the night?”
He peered over the top of his aviator shades, blue eyes piercing and too darn appealing. “I went to Walmart Supercenter. Open twenty-four hours.”
“Renshaws shop at Walmart?” She closed the gate behind her, stepping into her sleepy city and aware from the draw of just a look from Hank.
“For a car seat at midnight. Yeah.” He pitched his coffee cup into a street trash can, then fished keys from his pocket and thumbed the automatic lock. Lights flashed on a dark blue Escalade. Not tricked out. Just understated wealth.
“Nice,” she conceded. “Definitely more comfortable than my five-year-old little hatchback.”
Forcing him to fold himself into her tiny econo car would be silly and pointless. In fact, fighting him every step of the way could be more telling than just going with the flow, pretending they were still simply friends.
He opened the back door and tossed in the diaper bag. “And does the infant seat meet with your approval?”
“Let me see… .” She checked the belt, making sure he’d installed it properly.
“The air force trusts me with a B-52. I think you can trust me to follow instructions.”
“It’s my child’s safety. I have to be sure.” And she found nothing wrong.
Wow. It had taken her three hours to figure one of these out. She eased Max from the sling, her son so small in her hands, so perfect. Love and protectiveness welled up inside her—along with gratitude that Hank had gone to such trouble to make sure her baby had everything he needed.
Hank had to be exhausted, just back from overseas, then immediately on the road to see her. No wonder he needed the coffee. Her mouth watered at the thought of having a taste of something she’d been denied since getting pregnant with Max… .
Uh, coffee. She missed coffee and chocolate and spicy foods, things she gave up while breastfeeding.
“Gabrielle?” Hank stood in the open door, her beautiful historic city behind him.
Her adventure. She’d started out here with such plans for taking the world by storm, launching a powerful career in international banking. Now she just wanted to help her child get healthy.
“Right, let’s go before we’re late.”
She clicked Max in securely and thought about staying in back with him. But he was already asleep again and Hank was holding the passenger door open for her. Without another thought, she shuffled into the front, and Hank pulled out into the early morning traffic.
His GPS spoke softly. Of course he’d already plugged in the address for the hospital where Max would have his pre-admission blood work. Outside the car, people walked
to work in business clothes. A mom pushed her kid in a stroller, passing by a homeless guy sleeping in a doorway. New Orleans was such a mix of history and wealth, poverty and decay. The city had looked different to her before her son was born. Her plans had looked different.
Hank’s phone chimed from where he’d placed it on the dash. He glanced at the LED screen and let it go to voice mail. It was the same phone she’d seen him playing with earlier.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you as the video game type.”
He glanced over with barely a half smile, so serious for a guy who’d been blasting digital bugs on her steps. “I went to a military high school. One of my roommates was a computer geek.”
“He got you hooked on games?”
“You could say so. His computer access was limited in school—conditions of not going to jail for breaking into the Department of Defense mainframe.”
Her eyes zipped to his phone. “How did I never know you attended a military high school? Or that you’re into video games?”
“You and I spent most of our time together keeping things light.”
They had always avoided more serious subjects, like where they’d gone to school and their family histories. Until that day she’d poured her heart out over her fight with Kevin. How he’d wanted her to move in and she’d wanted the space to finish pursuing her dreams. Kevin had been living his. She just wanted the same chance.
She’d stopped short of telling Hank everything the fight had been about, unable to bring herself to share intimate details about a forgotten condom. How she’d been frustrated about Kevin’s partying. The very playful attitude she’d originally been drawn to was beginning to pall. She was tired of always having to be the responsible one.
But God, she couldn’t break up with Kevin right before a deployment, especially not when she wasn’t even sure what she wanted. Talking to Hank, the harder she’d cried, the more she’d gasped, the more each breath hauled in the scent of him. Before she could think, she’d been kissing him, stunned as hell over the desire combusting inside her. She’d been attracted to him—sure—but she’d thought she had that under control. She was focused. She and Kevin were a good match. They balanced each other out, his humor lightening her driven nature. She didn’t need more intensity in her life.
Except when Hank had focused all that intensity on her, she’d been damn near helpless to resist.
Her hands fisted until her gnawed-down nails bit into her palms. Their past time together was better left alone, especially today with everything he’d said last night still so fresh and raw. “Back to the DoD hacker high school roommate?”
“Once he turned twenty-one and got free of his cyber watchdog, he set up a small company that developed cutting-edge software. Computer games. Mostly save-the-world type of stuff.”
“What game were you playing this morning?” she asked, intrigued by this side of Hank she hadn’t guessed at before. Had he never seemed lighthearted around Kevin because Hank had been relegated to the role of mature grown-up? Had she lost some of her lightheartedness around her fiancé for the same reason, playing less rather than more around him? “Maybe I’ve heard of it.”
“It isn’t out yet.”
“How nice of your friend to let you test run his material.”
“I own part of the company.”
That caught her up short.
“Really? Yet another thing I didn’t know about you.” Did his influence stretch to every niche of the stratosphere—political, financial, military and now even the geek-squad world, as well?
“I’m a silent partner, and I prefer to keep it that way. I’ve got enough notoriety hanging around my neck thanks to my family.”
“Why this investment, though?” She wished she could see his eyes, read what he was thinking as her impression of him altered. “You’re not a games kind of guy.”
“But I’m a practical guy.” He stopped smoothly at a red light. “The venture made good business sense.”
The MBA part of her applauded him, although she suspected something else was at work here. “You’re all about the military, not business. You don’t care about money. You never have.” Her more frugal upbringing applauded that, as well. “You risked the money to help a friend, and it just turned out well for you.”
“When did you swap from a business major to psychology?” He slid his sunglasses down his nose, his eyes laser sharp as he looked over the top of the lenses at her.
What a time to remember a blue flame burned hottest.
“Hey, you inserted yourself into my life. Turnabout is fair play.”
And damned if he wasn’t doing it with complete ease.
* * *
This wasn’t as easy as it seemed.
Midday sun piercing his aviator shades, Hank slid into a parking spot two blocks away from Gabrielle’s apartment. He’d spent all morning helping through the pre-hospitalization blood work for her baby to have surgery tomorrow. There hadn’t been a chance to speak over lunch, not between juggling the kid back and forth. So the day was slipping away and he still hadn’t made any headway in finding an opening to persuade her to stay with him during the kid’s recovery. Every time he got close, something distracted him.
Like the way Max had cried when the lab technician stuck his tiny toe.
Hank had wanted to tuck the kid under his arm like a football and book it out of the hospital. Which was damn silly. They were just doing their jobs around here. This was all necessary to make the boy better.
Now, they were already back at her place again. It was just past lunchtime, but felt as if it were even later. The kid was getting cranky, so Hank just unsnapped the car seat fast and hefted it out for expediency’s sake. Gabrielle followed efficiently, the dark circles of worry under her eyes even darker. Damn it, she needed more help than just someone carrying the kid and supplying a meal.
Accordion zydeco music swelled from a street café, although, strangely, the antiques shop below her apartment sported a closed sign. He was going to have to just ask her to stay with him. And she would say no. Then he would have to get pushy, which would piss her off. Hell, it would piss him off. But he wasn’t wrong.
Being right didn’t comfort him much.
He pushed open the iron gate to let her through, prepping his words and his will for the fight ahead once she had her son fed and asleep again.
Gabrielle gasped and pulled up short. Instinctively, he looked around for a threat—a mugger? Another drunk like last night? How could he have forgotten they were in downtown New Orleans—an undeniably cool place to party but not the safest city on the planet?
Grabbing her around the waist with one arm, he tucked her against him. “Gabrielle?”
Ah, hell. Her bottom nestled right against him, close, intimate and too arousing. He took a breath and backed away. They had a cranky kid to take care of.
“Look,” she said, pointing up toward her apartment.
He barely had time to process the sight of water pouring out from under her door before the front entrance to the shop burst open. A woman—probably in her fifties—rushed toward them wearing a 1920s flapper get-up. Which would seem strange somewhere else. But New Orleans was an “anything goes” kind of place. A name tag pinned to her chest declared her Leonie, and the costume actually made sense for an antiques store employee.
Gabrielle brushed past him and clasped the woman’s hands. “Leonie, what’s going on?”
“A water pipe burst.” She peered around Gabrielle with undisguised curiosity chasing away her harried look for a moment. “But a more important question, who’s this?”
“Leonie, this is Hank, a friend of mine.” Gabrielle chewed her lip before continuing. “Hank, this is Leonie Lanier. She works part-time in the shop and helps me with Max.”
Interesting that she’d left off the Renshaw last name and hadn’t referred to him as Kevin’s friend. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
“You, too, Hank.” She finally peeled her gaze aw
ay and back onto Gabrielle. “The broken water pipe flooded all three floors. It’s horrible downstairs. Yours is mostly damage along the floors. Still, even if your place isn’t a mess, they had to turn off the water.”
Gabrielle pointed up at the flowing stream trickling under her door. “And what’s that if the water’s off?”
“Everything that happened before we turned off the main valve.” She pressed a hand to her forehead, right over the beaded band. “We’re not sure what caused it, but I’m sorry, sweetie. All the renters in the building have to find somewhere else to stay. The second I heard that, my heart just sank for you and this precious little guy. As if you don’t have enough to fret about now.”
For the first time in ten godforsaken months, life was cutting him a break. He wouldn’t have to fight or argue with Gabrielle. Persuading her to come to the house he’d rented would be a cakewalk now.
He clasped her shoulder, securing his grip on the car seat still in his other hand. “Gabrielle doesn’t have to worry about a thing. She can stay with me.”
“I’ll check in to a hotel,” she said tightly, stubborn to the end.
“Do you really want your son exposed to the germs of a generic hotel room?” He asked, swinging the car seat slowly to lull the restless baby.
“Since when did you become a germaphobe?” She perched her hands on her hips, cinching in her simple black cotton sheathe. “I distinctly recall you bragging about eating bugs in survival training.”
“I’m not an infant facing surgery.”
“Are you trying to make me cry?”
“I’m trying to take care of you, damn it!”
Leonie cleared her throat.
Damn. He’d forgotten she was there, forgotten they were standing in the middle of a busy street.
“Gabrielle, sweetie—” Leonie hooked an arm with her “—the hotels, motels, everything’s full because of Mardi Gras.”
Deflating, Gabrielle leaned back against the wrought-iron gate. “Of course they are. I should have thought of that myself. What are you going to do?”
Honorable Intentions Page 4