The Key To Micah's Heart (Hell Yeah!)

by Sable Hunter

  “I have no ulterior motive. I came looking for a job, but I recognize this young lady. She’s the granddaughter of a friend of mine. I was about to offer her a ride home.” Her philosophy was never to admit a thing to the devil–not even if he caught you at it.

  “She called you Angel Rubio, did she not?” The younger of the three men asked her in a thick accent. Colombian, maybe?

  Lupe murmured an apology and Sofia gave her a reassuring squeeze. “My name is Sofia Garza Salazar, widow of Juan Salazar. I make my living selling flowers on a street corner. I am no threat to you.”

  “Threat?” The third man, the one with the white moustache spoke this time. “You have singlehandedly tried to ruin us. You have spread the word that you are the answer, a way out, that you will redeem these girls from a life of indignity and give them a fresh start. Even now, we know you have talked to people you shouldn’t. People who will pay for your blatant interference.”

  “I’m sorry, I think you have mistaken me for someone else.” She tried to be stoic, but when one of them stalked up and snatched her mantilla from her head, she groaned.

  “See, your hair is pale like your skin. You are the one they speak of…this Angel Rubio. A former harlot, trying to pay for your sins by saving those who are not worthy to latch my shoes. But you do not save this one, nor will you save yourself. You want to see what we do here? Well, we’ll show you…first hand. Guard! Take these two below and let us prepare for tonight’s entertainment. And do whatever it takes to get an address out of her, we need to let her family know where she is…and how she’s doing.” He laughed uproariously as if he’d just made a huge joke.

  Lupe cried and Sofia prayed as they were led through the beaded curtain to God knows what awaited them. Noah, my Noah, I wish I had waited for you. Be safe, my child.

  Coming out of the writer’s cave…

  To take his mind off the unfamiliar feelings he was experiencing, Micah strolled through the mansion, following the sound of feminine laughter. “What are you hens cackling about in here?” Micah quipped when he came through the kitchen doors.

  He found Aron, Noah and Isaac McCoys wives–Libby, Skye and Avery–sitting around the large marble island that sat smack-dab in the middle of the kitchen. As he glanced around at the trays of extra food, he noticed the beat-up old cutting boards on the counter by the sink. They possessed a certain character that just fit with the old house. Many times Hannah had told him that she closed her eyes and just imagined the great women who’d lived in this house before her and that she felt extremely lucky and grateful to be included in their ranks. Micah knew she sometimes couldn’t fathom her rise from illegal immigrant to the First Lady of Texas. It didn’t shock him, Hannah was nothing less than a gracious, elegant woman.

  “What are we cackling about? Boys, what else?” Libby answered with a giggle.

  Micah placed his drink down on the island. “Be a doll and top me off, would yah, hon?”

  Hannah, having just joined them, whacked him on the arm. “You know where the fridge is. Top yourself off.”

  Micah gave Kyle’s wife a wink, then turned his attention to the McCoy women. “Any word from Noah yet?” He wanted to get their take on the situation.

  Skye sighed. “Nothing yet. I just hope it all goes smoothly. I can’t imagine what it’s got to be like for my poor Noah. Meeting his mother for the first time. It has to be tough.”

  Everyone in the room could feel how heavily it was weighing on her and Libby stretched a hand out to place on top of Skye’s.

  “So nobody is gonna get me a drink, I take it?” Micah joked, trying to impart a bit of levity into what had suddenly become a very somber moment. He stormed over to the refrigerator in an exaggerated stride. “Where the hell is Jeeves when I need him?”

  His antics drew a small chuckle from the women. Hannah was piling plates up on the counter next to Paulo’s cake. He’d already blown out the candles and she was about to slice the layered delight. “Well, I for one, am happy for the break in the party. Don’t get me wrong. I love being the governor’s wife, but it gets tiring shaking all those hands and smiling for so long. I wish we could’ve just had all of you over instead of the political scavengers who constantly circle my husband.”

  Micah came up beside Hannah. He could hear the tension in her voice. “Easy now, little darlin’.” He took the sharp knife out of her hand. “Why don’t you just let ol’ Micah take care of this cake cuttin’ business? You go on now. Scoot. I reckon anything to do with a sharp blade probably ought to be considered man’s work.” He began to cut the slices. “I’ll say, there’s more cake here than you can shake a stick at. Bless your heart. I bet it’s so good, my mouth’s waterin’. Why, I’m just ready and rarin to go at this cake.”

  The chuckles turned into full-fledged giggles now. The messages with Madison had invigorated Micah and he was in full performance mode.

  Libby turned to Avery. “You should use those for titles of your books.” She thrust her hand in the air as if framing words. “I can see it now. ‘More Than You Can Shake a Stick At’, ‘My Mouth’s Waterin’ and ‘Ready and Rarin’ to Go’.”

  The big bad wolf’s ears perked up. “Books?” he asked slyly, not looking away from what he was doing.

  Avery fixed Libby with a fierce glare.

  “Ooops, I’m sorry,” Libby put a hand over her mouth. “You know I’ve got a big mouth.”

  Micah placed a slice of cake on a plate and considered letting it go, but when he looked up and saw how uncomfortable they all suddenly looked, he just couldn’t help himself. He pushed a slice of cake in front of Libby. “Don’t you just love girl talk?”

  Libby grinned and picked up a fork. She was just about to dig in when Micah pulled the plate back to him.

  “Not so fast. Spill it. Or no cake, sweetheart.”

  Libby looked to her left, Avery still had the glare on her face and her eyes had narrowed even further, a clear warning in them.

  Micah dug a fork into Libby’s slice and lifted the sugary concoction to his lips. “Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. So moist and fluffy.”

  Libby swore she felt a bead of sweat roll down her forehead and all eyes in the room were focused on her.

  “Don’t do it, Libby,” Skye said playfully. “The man is the devil.”

  “Don’t listen to her, Libby.” Micah waved a forkful in her face, his voice dropping to a purposefully hypnotic drawl. “Tell me what you know. Surrender to the darkness. We have cake over on this side. You know you want it.”

  Libby had helped bake little Paulo’s chocolate ganache cake. She knew exactly how delicious the sinful blend of chocolaty layer upon chocolaty layer would taste and she could feel herself starting to crack.

  Micah went to the refrigerator. “I bet a nice, tall, cool glass of milk would go just right with this cake.” He poured a glass slowly, letting Libby think about it for a while.

  Libby’s hand came sneaking across the table towards the plate.

  “Liberty Belle McCoy.” Skye slapped it away. “Don’t you even think about it.”

  Micah’s eyes stayed locked on Libby’s. “I’m afraid Misses McCoy has already coveted thy cake, Skye. It seems the dark side has become too much to resist. And by dark side, I mean this decadently, sinful chocolate.”

  “Avery writes dirty books!” Libby suddenly shouted.

  “Libby!” Avery, Skye and Hannah all chastised in unison.

  Micah slid the plate back across to her. “Good girl.”

  Libby scooped a big chunk of cake up with her fork. “What?” She inquired innocently as the women looked at her, a dollop of ganache at the corner of her mouth. “He’s a friend, it was bound to come up sometime.”

  “Benedict Arnold,” Avery muttered before averting her glare from Libby and toward Micah.

  Micah stood with a hand on the counter. He’d tucked a napkin into the front of his shirt to guard against any falling cake. “Dirty books, huh?” he asked, pulling the prongs of his fork slowly
from between his lips before smirking at her.

  Avery had long ago gotten over being ashamed of what she wrote. She was proud of it, but she didn’t go around advertising. “Yes, I do. They aren’t really dirty books. I write adventure and suspense too. My books are tasteful and beautiful and full of love.”

  “And dirty words.” Micah prompted with a smirk.

  “If you must know, yes there is some…descriptive language.” Avery struck out a hand and tugged the napkin out of Micah’s collar. “You look ridiculous.”

  Micah could only laugh. “I assume you use an alias.” Oh, how he was loving this. Avery had been visibly upset when Libby spilled the beans…but if she, if they all, only knew he was in the same boat as Avery. But he wasn’t about to offer up that information right away. Micah Wolfe loved watching people squirm.

  “Yes, I do use an alias as a matter of fact. Not that I would expect you to know anything about the world of erotic romance.”

  Micah placed another forkful of cake into his mouth. “Oh. Now why is that exactly?” This was all just too much fun for the wolf.

  “Most men know nothing of my world.”

  “Well, now, let’s see. I never claimed to be ‘most men’. So why don’t you lay it on me, little momma. What’s your alias?”

  “Sable Hunter.”

  Micah spit his cake out onto the counter. “You’re Sable Hunter?”

  Avery was confused. “Why, yes, I am. Have you heard of me?”

  Micah gathered himself. “I have.” This was all too good. Not only had he heard of Sable Hunter, but Sable Hunter and Don Juan shared a publisher. All this time he and Avery had known each other and neither of them had been the wiser.

  “Libby and Skye. Can you two give me a hand taking plates out?” Hannah asked when the cake had been all cut up for service. She’d seen how Avery’s eyes lit up when Micah said he’d heard of her and she wanted to let them talk a little longer.

  Avery wasn’t sure how to go about talking to Micah about her writing life. There were men who knew who she was and what she wrote, but she wasn’t used to running into men who knew her for her work.

  Micah couldn’t help himself any longer, he fished his wallet out of his back pocket and slid a business card across the island to Avery once the other women were out of the room.

  Avery picked it up. “Get the heck out of here! You are not Don Juan!” Micah just nodded. “Oh, good heavens. I have read your stuff. I love it. And we share a publisher.”

  “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you Sable Fuckin’ Hunter.”

  Avery laughed out loud. “And you too, Don Juan. You know, it’s funny.”

  “I know. Small world, isn’t it?”

  “Well yes, that too, but I was going to say, there aren’t a lot of men who write what we write.”

  Micah knew what was next. He’d had to field the same questions any time a new person found out his secret, but this time he knew he wasn’t going to get annoyed. He knew in Avery he’d found a similar soul, they had something they could bond over that few others could. Avery knew what it was like to write what he wrote.

  “Why do I write it?” Micah asked before the words came out of Avery’s mouth.

  Avery felt immediately embarrassed. She was super excited to have found out the news, but she now realized Micah also had to answer the question everyone always asked her. “You get asked that a lot too, huh?”

  Micah could see the sudden discomfort on her face. “Oh, don’t worry about it. I don’t have to tell you, but that question is usually asked in a snide, almost antagonistic way. That might not be your experience because you’re a girl, but for me, it always seems the person asking it is challenging me in a way. Especially the guys. It seems like they are actually insulting my manhood. But hey. It comes with the territory I guess. Why do I write it? There’s a simple answer, really.”

  “I understand. I write what I like to read, it’s that simple.”

  Micah nodded. “My story is a bit more complicated. I had a bit of a rough relationship with my father. He wanted me to be a mini version of himself. We butted heads continuously growing up. Nothing I ever did was good enough for him. And me being me, I looked for every opportunity to piss him off. So instead of staying here in Texas to play football and go to UT, I said screw him and went to Syracuse University for my first year of college.”

  “You Yankee traitor,” Avery said with a chuckle.

  Micah joined in with the laughter. “Yea, that pretty much sums up what I was hoping my father would think when I did it. If my decision to go to Syracuse wasn’t already enough to piss him off, I also passed up a spot on the Syracuse football team and instead walked in and played on the lacrosse team. Everything was great for the first few months. I met lots of new interesting people and I loved playing lacrosse and believe me, all of those things together went a long way in pissing off dear old Albert Wolfe. But eventually it lost its luster. I started to miss home. Before the year was over, I was back in Texas and applying to go to UT the next year.” He finished the cake on his plate. “What can I say? I was homesick. I missed my friends. I missed Kyle, Saxon, my horses and the ranch.

  “Now I bet you’re asking yourself. ‘What does that have to do with writing erotic literature?’ And that’s a fair question. It’s while I was at Syracuse that I met Leah.”

  “Leah?” Avery settled in comfortably on her stool, she felt like this was going to be a good story.

  “Oh yes, Leah. I was new in town. Hell, I was new in that part of the world and I was definitely not old enough to drink. But in a college town, the bartenders tend to look the other way when you hand over a piece of clearly fraudulent identification. Don’t tell anyone, but Saxon made me, Kyle, and himself some of the worst fake IDs you have ever seen when we were in high school. We mostly used them to buy beer. Me and Kyle were always big for our age, so the guy behind the counter rarely questioned us, but we all felt like such badasses, walking around with fake IDs in our wallets at age sixteen.” He waved his fork in the air. “But that’s neither here nor there. As I was saying, the guys from the lacrosse team would occasionally go drink at a bar called Fifty-Eight Special. The place was way off campus. It was an older crowd. Oh hell, it was a cougar bar, I’m just gonna tell the truth. Mature women don’t play games and they don’t have the hang-ups college girls do and it was refreshing for a guy like me who’d always had to deal with the bullshit of girls my own age.”

  Avery smiled. “I’m enjoying you, you’re as crazy as Isaac said you were.”

  Micah laughed. “Can’t deny it. Well, my buddies on the team were always hooking up with women at the bar. Now, I’ll swear on a stack of bibles under oath if ever called to that this isn’t true, but I’ve never been much for random hook-ups. For yours truly, it’s more about the flirting, it’s more about the seduction. I hate to admit it, but I can be quite a clit tease. I’d say pardon my language, but considering present company, I think the language is acceptable.”

  “Hell yeah, it is,” Avery said with a smile.

  “Good one.” He laughed and pointed, realizing she’d just named her most popular series. “But like I was saying, I have a reputation to maintain, so I’ll deny it if pressed on the issue. Anyway, Leah came up to the bar one night while I was there waiting for a drink. She was confident and assured of herself. She actually hit on me. It was so bold, so brazen and unapologetic and so incredibly awkward for me–at first that is. But I started to like it, quickly. There were no games, she just introduced herself and we sat and talked and did some dancing. Now far be it for a southern gentleman like myself to reveal a woman’s age, but I will tell you that Leah was over forty and under fifty. You can glean what you want from that, but she was amazing. And by that, I mean she could carry a conversation, she could flirt and she could dance like nobody was watching. Needless to say, I was mesmerized by her. We struck up a friendship, as unconventional as it was and eventually and by ‘eventually’, I mean very quickly, that friend
ship began to include benefits.”

  “Good for you.”

  “I have to tell you, Avery. The benefits were out of this world. The woman held nothing back in bed. She was a goddess. Confident and wild. The kind of stuff that a young guy like me dreamed about at the time. I learned so much about women from her. I was smitten. Looking back on it now, she wasn’t into me in a boyfriend/girlfriend kind of way, she was just having fun, but I was all in.”

  “You know I’m going to borrow this storyline, don’t you?”

  Micah chuckled. “Go ahead, you have my permission. One night after a particularly vigorous roll in the hay, I asked her where she’d learned some of the stuff she did in bed. She opened up her night table drawer and pulled out a book. I couldn’t tell you what the book looked like, who wrote it or even what it was about, but I read it front to back in a day. That was my introduction to the world of erotic literature and I have been reading and writing it ever since.” He didn’t add Colton’s influence or encouragement, that was just too personal to share.

  “What happened with Leah?”

  “Awww. Fair Leah. As I told you a moment ago, I grew homesick. I missed my friends and Texas, but what I didn’t tell you was that part of the reason I left Syracuse is because Leah left. She was some bigwig in the corporate world. She never really liked to talk about her job, but she got transferred and moved to Japan. There was no big goodbye. No, Micah running through the airport with a bouquet of flowers trying to stop her from getting on the plane. It was what it was, a brief moment in time shared by two people who enjoyed each other. When I found out she was leaving, there was a few days of heartache, but it passed quickly. Leah leaving Syracuse was the last straw, I guess you could say. She’d been my distraction from how homesick I felt and with her gone, I decided to come back home.”

  “Did you ever see her again?”

  “It’s a romantic tale, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No. I never saw her again. We never exchanged info. We never arranged for me to come to Japan. It was a clean break. I think I was young and a part of me romanticizes the story more than it deserves, but that was how I saw it.”