Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  Hal smiled back. “I’ll be there at eight.”

  “Right.”

  Hal looked like he didn’t know what to do so his movements were awkward when he turned to walk away.

  Hix called his name and he turned back.

  “Just wanna say at this juncture that I’ll be gettin’ on writing those commendations for yours and Bets’s files, and not because you’re helpin’ me move. Because you both went beyond the call, her lookin’ for Nat, you ridin’ that hunch that guy would toss the weapon and finding that gun. It was good work, Hal. Not just solid. It was smart and showed serious initiative. We ever find him, you tied that bow. And I’ll make sure that’s in your file.”

  Hal’s voice sounded clogged when he said, “Thanks, Hix.”

  “Not sure why you’re thankin’ me, but you’re welcome.”

  Hal nodded, moved out looking even more uncomfortable and that didn’t change when Donna passed him walking in and she did it smiling at him.

  She came right to his desk and her smile went strange as she said, “It sucks I gotta dim the glow of whatever you said to Hal leading him to tackle the herculean effort of proving he’s a decent human being, but Jep’s here.”

  Hix looked out the window to see Hope’s father standing at reception.

  “Jesus, shit,” Hix muttered.

  “You want me to tell him you’re busy?” she offered.

  He did.

  But that wouldn’t nip this in the bud like he had to do.

  So he shook his head, coming up from his chair.

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  He followed her out but stopped at the back of the aisle between desks and called, “Jep, you wanna come on back?”

  “Yeah, son,” Jep returned, and then moved through the swinging half door.

  Hix watched him and did it noting Jep, who was always sure of himself, looked even more awkward than Hal had.

  They shook hands when Jep arrived at him but they said nothing until Hix walked him into his office and closed the door behind him.

  He moved to the back of one of the chairs at his desk, stopped, turned to the man and crossed his arms on his chest.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “You got time to have lunch, Hixon?” Jep asked back.

  “Not really,” Hix lied.

  “Son—”

  “Jep, I got a phone. You got a phone. We need to talk about somethin’, you can call me. You wanna have lunch, you can call me about that too. You showin’ here, it tells me this is either official business or it’s somethin’ else. If it’s official, you can talk to me here. If it’s somethin’ else, we gotta have another conversation.”

  Jep’s hand started to move up to his collar, dropped, and he blew out a breath between pursed lips before he said, “I’m sorry, Hixon, but I’m here because I gotta urge you . . . strongly . . . to have a sit down with my daughter.”

  Hix didn’t move a muscle. “Right. Since that’s the case, I hate to do it but I’m gonna have to do it. This is my place of business, Jep. You don’t pin me here because you know I’m gonna be here and Hope’s activated you to deal with her shit. That isn’t right, it isn’t appropriate, and I’ll end with it not bein’ your style.”

  “It’s important.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “She’s the mother of your children, Hix.”

  “We got a problem?” he asked.

  His ex-father-in-law stared at him a beat before he shook his head once. “No. Nope.” He lifted a hand palm out and again dropped it almost before he got it up. “I know you’ve moved on. Hear she’s a great gal. None of my business. But Hope’s got some things she wants to explain to you and she knows she’s messed it up so she can’t approach you. She’s sent me as proxy. I’m her father.” This time, he lifted both hands low to his sides. “What’m I supposed to do?”

  Hix gave him the obvious answer, “Tell her no.”

  Jep looked to the wall beyond Hix’s head.

  Hix gave it a few moments before, quietly, he stated, “This can’t happen again, Jep. It’s not right how you went about this and it’s not right how Hope asked you to intervene. She wants a chat, she can grow up, suck it up and ask me for one.”

  Jep’s eyes came to him and his face was set to stubborn.

  “You got two girls, you’ll learn. They grow up but they never quit bein’ your babies.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he allowed. “Maybe one day I’ll have cause to remember this and feel like an ass. But if I do, what I’m gonna say is gonna sound harsh, Jep, but it’ll be in the middle of me already feelin’ like an ass because I know I’m in the middle of a situation where I’m in the wrong for bein’ where I am and doin’ what I’m doin’.”

  Jep looked ticked for a second before that wore away and he muttered, “Damned if you ain’t right. Knew it before I walked in here but . . .” He shook his head and finished at the same time Hix’s cell rang. “I’ll talk to her.”

  “Obliged,” Hix muttered, walking to his phone that was sitting on his desk, saying, “I hope you get part of what she’s done is possibly put important things we share, that I’m thinkin’ mean something to the both of us, in a bad place.”

  “Nope, son, I did that not havin’ the fortitude to tell my girl to do right.”

  But Hix didn’t hear Jep’s reply.

  Because he saw his screen told him Greta was calling.

  At that time she should be off to Sunnydown to take her brother out for lunch.

  Why would she be calling?

  “Gotta take this,” he muttered, turned his side to Jep and took the call, acutely and irritatingly aware of the company he was in. “Hey.”

  “Hix, she’s here.”

  Hix felt his spine snap straight at her tone.

  “Who?” he asked.

  But shit.

  He knew.

  “Mom!” she cried, giving him the answer he knew. “She’s making a huge scene. She knows. She knows it’s my day off and I come here to see Andy and she’s here. Shouting and carrying on and demanding to see him, saying I’m keeping her away from her baby and—”

  He snatched the keys to his Ram from the desk and cut her off. “You with Andy?”

  “I can’t get to him. She keeps shouting at me and getting in my space, shoving me off. I can’t get in a catfight with my mother in Andy’s home, Hix!” Her voice had been rising but it dropped with her next in her increasing panic. “I know he’s hearing it. Everyone is but his room isn’t far from the front. And it’s probably freaking him out.”

  That was not good.

  But no.

  Hell no.

  That bitch did not put her hands on Greta.

  “Go sit in your car,” he ordered, moving by Jep, dipping his chin, saying, “Gotta take this,” and that was it.

  He was out the door.

  “Go sit in my car?” she asked, her voice pitching higher with her also increasing anxiety.

  “Go sit in your car,” he demanded and stopped between Donna and Bets’s desks. “Both of you,” he looked between them, “in a Ram. Follow me.”

  “Hix,” Greta called in his ear as he started moving again, feeling Donna and Bets move behind him.

  “I’m coming. I’m bringing some deputies. She can either calm down and remove herself from the premises or she can be arrested for trespassing and disturbing the peace. But I’ll be giving her that choice. You’ll be sitting in your car while I’m doing it.”

  “It’ll take you twenty minutes to get here and—”

  “Not with my lights on.”

  “Oh,” she mumbled.

  “Get in your car, baby.”

  “Okay, Hix.”

  “I’ll be there in ten.”

  “Right. Okay.”

  “Letting you go now.”

  “Okay, darlin’. Uh . . . see you.”

  “You will.”

  He hung up standing by his Ram with Donna and Bets standing with hi
m, eyes to him.

  “Greta’s mom is at the home where her brother stays. Greta is his guardian. Her mother is a lot of things, including the woman who gave him the injuries he has that put him in the home by driving drunk and getting in an accident when he was a teenager.”

  That got him big eyes from Bets, narrowed ones from Donna, but he ignored both and kept going.

  “Greta’s denied her mother access to him. She’s there, causing a scene. You heard what I said to Greta?”

  “Yeah, boss,” Bets replied.

  “Yeah, Hixon,” Donna said.

  “Follow me,” he commanded, went to his Ram, angled in and rolled out, the light on his dash and the two that blinked through the grill going as he raced to Sunnydown with Donna driving the Ram, Bets in the passenger seat, following him.

  He got the call from Reva that Sunnydown had reported the disturbance on the way.

  He swung in at the diagonal yellow lines that were at the front doors of Sunnydown, but he’d caught sight of Greta getting out of her Cherokee as he swung in.

  Donna swung in beside him as he folded out of his Ram.

  He lifted a hand his woman’s way and ordered, “Stay by your car, Greta.”

  She stopped walking toward him and started walking backwards.

  Hix prowled into the building to see a man in a security uniform, big guy, big stomach hanging over his belt, no baton or gun on that belt, not even a Taser, barring the way into a wide hall, staring unhappily down at the woman who was standing in front of him, her voice scratchy from continuous shrieking.

  “You can’t keep me from my boy!” She leaned beyond the guard, who bent that way to impede her should she make a break for it, and screeched, “Andy! Andy, baby! Your momma is out here.”

  “Quiet!” Hix barked.

  She jumped and whirled.

  Then he watched her lip curl.

  “Well if it isn’t—” she began.

  “I said quiet,” he bit off.

  “You can’t muzzle me!” she shouted then swung an arm behind her, finger pointed. “My baby’s back there!”

  “You have two choices,” Hix announced. “You settle down, get in your car and leave, not to return unless you’ve received word you’ve been approved as a visitor for Andrew Dare, or these deputies will be arresting you for trespassing and disturbing the peace.”

  “I can’t trespass where my boy is kept,” she spat.

  “You aren’t legal guardian of your boy so that’d be wrong.”

  “Just because you’re fuckin’ my—”

  Hix turned and dipped his chin to Donna. “Arrest her.”

  “You can’t arrest me!” she screamed and whirled again, making a break to run down the hall and colliding with the security guy who jumped in her way, screeching, “Andy! Andy! Your momma’s—”

  Donna took her forearm in one hand, stating, “You have the right—”

  She whirled again and twisted her arm from Donna’s hold. “Take your fuckin’ hands off me!”

  Bets moved in. “Ma’am, calm down.”

  Greta’s mother shuffled back. “Fuck you.”

  “Ma’am, calm down, turn around and put your hands behind your back,” Donna instructed.

  “Kiss my ass,” she bit out, turned again and shouted, “Andy!”

  “Hon, no. No,” Hix heard coming from down the hall and he looked that way to see a tall young man with dark hair and a serious scar marring handsome features shuffle sideways into the hall. “Andy, honey—” A woman was trying gently to push him back in the room.

  Fuck.

  Hix started to make his way there as Tawnee saw her son and shrieked, “Andy! My boy!”

  Hix halted at Greta’s mother, turned his back to her brother and whispered, “You make one more move to resist arrest, we’re charging you with that too. Now, I’ve had occasion to sit in front of the judge recently and we’ll just say, with current events, he’s not in a good mood.” He leaned closer. “But I think someone else will not be pleased you’re makin’ this play and I got a feelin’ you should be more concerned about his reaction. So shut your mouth, Ms. Dare. Calm down. Walk with these deputies out of this building where you’ll put your hands behind your back so they can cuff you and read you your rights without your boy seein’ them do it, then allow them to take you to the station.”

  Suddenly, making his stomach turn, she smiled and exposed this was all a play to upset Greta when she threatened in a quiet voice, “Buckle up, baby. I’m just gettin’ started.”

  “Whatever,” he muttered and saw her face go slack in confusion before he jerked his head to Donna and she moved in.

  She put a hand on Tawnee’s biceps but Tawnee snatched her arm away, tossed her hair and didn’t even glance at her son as she strutted out of the building, Bets and Donna following.

  Hix looked at the security guy. “Could you please follow them and make sure all’s well out there, then, when they got her in the back of their vehicle, tell Greta she can come in here?”

  “Sure ’nuf, Sheriff,” the man replied, then broke into a lumbering jog, following Donna and Bets.

  Hix drew in breath, turned and walked down to where Greta’s brother was standing outside his room, worrying his lip, staring down the hall where his mother disappeared.

  “Andy,” he called, and the man’s eyes moved from the hall to Hix.

  He didn’t look a thing like his sister.

  But he was a good-looking kid.

  He lifted a hand to him. “I’m Hixon.”

  Andy looked from Hix’s eyes to his hand to his badge back to his eyes.

  “You’re police.”

  “Yes, Andy, I’m the sheriff.”

  “Police,” he repeated.

  Hix dropped his hand and looked to the woman at Andy’s side.

  She gave him a shake of her head that Hix could not interpret before Andy stated, “Police took Mom.”

  “I’m sorry, Andy, but yes. Greta’s outside and she—”

  “Ta-Ta?”

  Ta-Ta.

  Sweet.

  Hellaciously sad coming from a man his height, his age.

  But sweet.

  “Yeah, buddy. She’s outside and she’ll be in—”

  “Police didn’t take my mom.”

  “I’m sorry, bud, but we had to—”

  “Ta-Ta’s my mom.”

  Hix closed his mouth and looked again at the woman with Andy.

  She gave him big eyes.

  No freaking help at all.

  “My sister, but my mom,” Andy gave it to him and Hix looked at Greta’s brother again.

  “Yeah, bud. I get it.”

  “That lady, I don’t care,” Andy told him.

  “Yeah, Andy,” Hix said quietly. “I get it, man.”

  “Man,” Andy said and then he grinned. “I coulda told her to go. I didn’t mind tellin’ her to go. She doesn’t visit much and I don’t miss her when she’s gone.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Andy grinned again, his eyes shifted and his whole face lit up.

  That was when Hix watched him lope down the hall and take Greta in his arms, doing it twisting his head to rest the side of it to Greta’s shoulder like a little kid.

  Hix’s gut went tight as he watched Greta wrap her arms around her brother and close her eyes like she just hit heaven.

  Andy jumped back, out of her arms, and Hix watched his frame string tight.

  “Your face!” he yelled.

  “I fell, bud,” she said quickly. “That’s why I couldn’t come last Sunday. My hand slipped away and, crunch, busted my nose.” She gave him that like it was nothing at all then didn’t let Andy focus on it before she grabbed his hand, shook it and asked, “You good? You okay?”

  “Police took Mom,” he told her.

  “I know,” she said carefully. “I saw. Are you okay?”

  “It was awesome.”

  Hix felt himself relax even as he watched Greta do the same.

 
Her mouth quirked as she said, “I’m not sure we should think it’s awesome our mother got arrested, buddy.”

  “Maybe not. It was still awesome.”

  Hix watched as she drew in a deep breath she was trying to hide pulling in and let it out before she glanced at him and back to her brother. “Did you meet Hix?”

  “Hix?” Andy asked, sounding confused. She took a step his way and Andy turned with her, caught sight of Hix and said, “That’s the sheriff.”

  “Yeah, Andy,” she confirmed. “Hix. Hixon Drake. The county sheriff.”

  She was guiding Andy to him by his hand.

  “Trespassing and disturbing the peace,” Andy said to him when they arrived.

  “What?” Greta asked.

  “Mom,” he said to Hix then turned to his sister. “Trespassing and disturbing the peace.” He looked back at Hix. “She’s good at disturbing the peace.”

  “I got that impression.”

  Andy smiled big at him and repeated, “I got that impression.”

  He then started laughing.

  But Greta was smiling so that was when Hix fully relaxed.

  “Do you, uh . . . wanna, maybe, um . . .” she stammered then swallowed and finished, “Maybe ask the sheriff if he wants to come to lunch with us?”

  Hix felt a burn in his gut like he’d just put back a good bourbon.

  “Yeah!” Andy exclaimed. “Yeah, Sheriff. Wanna eat with us?” he asked.

  “You can call me Hix, Andy, and yeah. That’d be good.”

  “We’re gonna go to the Harlequin for chicken fingers,” he shared.

  Hix had been wanting to take Greta to the Harlequin for weeks.

  But right then, he didn’t give one shit that the first time they sat opposite each other in a booth there, her brother would be with them.

  “Sounds good,” Hix said.

  “Can I ride in your cop car with you?” Andy asked.

  “Andy—” Greta started.

  “It’s a cop truck, bud, and sure. Your sister thinks it’s okay.”

  Andy’s head swung to Greta.

  “If Hix says okay, it’s okay by me,” she allowed.

  Andy beamed at her then to Hix.

  Hix grinned at him and then to Greta. “We’ll meet you there?”

  She nodded, biting her lip but it didn’t quite hide her smile, a smile that was shining at him from her big eyes.