Mystery Man by Kristen Ashley
Words were filtering into my brain like “Mitch” and “taken off the case” and “because of you”.
So, I repeated, “What?” but I did it in a breathy whisper this time.
“Gwen, I don’t know what you did but whatever you did, he… is… into you. Everyone is talking about it. I’ve been waiting all day to get a break so I could call then you weren’t picking up your cell so I had to wait to get home to my address book because I didn’t remember your stupid home phone number. I cannot believe this. He is fine. He is fine. And he’s nice. And he’s fine. Did I say he was fine?”
“Cam –”
“I mean, the Captain wouldn’t take him off the case but the fact that he asked. Shit, girl. Shit. Shit!” she shrieked.
“Cam –”
“I love this. I’m talking to Leo the minute his ass walks through the door. We’re setting up a double date.”
“Cam!” I shouted.
“What?” she asked.
“I was broken into last night,” I told her.
“I know all about that, girl,” Cam replied in a “So what?” voice. “Meredith called me this morning and it’s the talk of the Station. I know all about MM too. I know everything.”
Shit, would I ever learn? I should never take my friends home because Meredith wriggled her way into their lives being a good, funny, generous person. Then I never could keep anything secret. I learned that early but did I stop my stupid behavior? No! Meredith still talked to my friend Chelsea from junior high. Chelsea lived on the Costa del Sol in Spain with some English gazillionaire and she and Meredith chatted several times a year and I hadn’t spoken to her in fifteen of them. We didn’t even exchange Christmas cards.
Repeat after me: family here, friends there and never the twain shall meet!
“Cam, things have become complicated,” I told her.
There was silence and then, “No, Gwen, you complicate things. I heard that MM declared his intentions and you contradicted him. Mitch heard it too. Stick to your guns. I know Mitch Lawson; I’ve known him for years. He’s a good cop, a good man and he wants a house with a white picket fence, two point five kids, a dog and a woman who can match his libido, which, rumor has it, runs in the red zone. He’s just never been able to find the one, even though he’s expended a fair amount of effort looking. Girl, you could be his one!”
“Yeesh, Cam, how do you know so much about him?”
“Did I not say he was fine?” she shot back. “I got Leo but that don’t mean I can’t study fine, and I do.”
This was true. She did. She’d studied fine for so long and with such diligence, she was at a professorial level in fine.
“I can’t think about this, I have to work,” I told her. “I have commandos in my house installing a security system. Hawk crushed Troy like a bug in front of Tracy and the aforementioned commandos. My sister is in some serious shit that is leaking into my life. And Tack declared his intentions this morning and there was an Official Meeting of the Badasses in my yard, the culmination of which I am not privy to but I know that Lawson and Tack retreated and, from your news, I figure it’s to regroup. I also know that I’ve seen Hawk three times by the light of day and one of those times he brought me J’s Noodles for lunch so I’m guessing he thinks he’s the front runner.”
“He brought you J’s Noodles?”
“Yes.”
“How does he know about you and J’s?”
“Cam, I told you yesterday, he knows everything about me! And now, when I say that, I mean he knows everything about me. He told me himself he follows me, or his boys do and report in. It’s insane!”
“Why would he do that?”
“I asked and his answer was, ‘Babe’, which is how he answers a lot of my questions or responds to a lot of my yelling at him.”
“I don’t know, Mitch can be broody but I would suspect he wouldn’t answer a direct question with ‘babe’.”
Good God.
“I can’t think about Mitch, I can’t think about anything,” I told her. “I seriously need to work and all this is messing with my head.”
“Well, you need to think about MM because once I heard that a man named Hawk claimed you as his own last night, I asked some questions about him and found out a lot and the lot I found out means you need to cut him loose.”
Oh boy. That didn’t sound good.
“I don’t want to know about him either. After a year and a half I’m learning fast and the more interaction I have with Hawk, the more the threat that I’ll be the first victim of spontaneous head explosion becomes imminent.”
“You don’t like him?”
“I don’t have time to explain the complexity of everything I feel about Hawk right now. I have three hours to do ten hours of work and then I have to be at my parents’ house. They know Ginger’s in trouble and they may have disowned her but she’s their daughter and she’s my sister and they’re going to worry. I know that because, it sucks and I want to wash it away, but I’m worried. I have to gear up for facing that. I’m taking this all one step at a time.”
There was more silence then, “You don’t sound too good.”
I closed my eyes, leaned forward and my head collided with my desk.
Why was no one paying attention to me?
“Was that your head hitting your desk?” Cam asked in my ear.
“Yes,” I whispered into the phone, keeping my eyes closed.
“All right, babe, I’ll leave you alone but we need cosmos, soon. I’ll talk to Leo about a double date. Maybe since you aren’t a major player in this case Mitch’ll be able to do dinner. Or maybe we can just plan a get together at our house and no one will be the wiser.”
I opened my eyes and stared at my lap. “This isn’t letting me go, Cam, this is planning my romantic future with a man I barely know while I’m freaking out about how I’m going to get the man I also barely know but have been sleeping with for months to agree we’re over when his ideas on that subject violently clash with mine.”
Silence then, “Really? You told him it was over?”
I shot up in my chair and cried, “Cam!”
“All right! All right, I’ll let you go.”
“Call Tracy, brief her with the limited intel you have, it’ll save me time,” I ordered.
“Gotcha.”
“No double dates.”
“We’ll just get something in the calendar.”
“Cam!”
“Later, babe.”
Then I was listening to dead air.
I beeped the phone off and put it on its base. Then I got up and went downstairs because I was pretty certain I had frozen Twix bars and I was pretty certain about this because I always had frozen Twix bars but it wasn’t unheard of for me accidentally to eat my way through my stash while, say, watching a movie or just getting the munchies. Through copious experimentation I’d discovered that frozen Twix bars were proven to intensify focus. I needed my focus intensified so I was going to pull out the big guns.
I found I had frozen Twix bars.
Upon offering, I also found that commandos didn’t eat frozen Twix bars.
This was good. More for me.
I grabbed a twin pack, straightened my shoulders, with effort cleared my head and determinedly walked back up the stairs to my office.
Chapter Eight
How We Met
As I headed to Dad and Meredith’s house I was feeling pretty good. I’d managed to make some headway on work and load up my files on my laptop before leaving my house.
I had a plan: eat dinner, explain shit to Dad and Meredith, do both of these things very fast then hole myself in Dad’s Den and work until my vision got blurry.
The only flaw in this plan was that I was tired. I’d only had about four good hours of sleep last night so I was running on empty. In my business attention to detail was key and getting fuzzy was not good. But I figured I had enough mojo left to squeeze in two or three good hours of concentration and, if I got a
With my plan of attack all sorted out, and my excuse of having to get work done a good one so Dad would cut his lecture short, I was feeling good, totally psyched up for dinner at my parents’.
That was until their house became visible and I saw a dark, metallic gray kickass Camaro parked out front.
I was beginning to understand why people were moved to acts of extreme violence when I parked behind the Camaro.
Even so, as I turned off my car and set the parking brake, I did take a moment to reflect on the fact that it was too bad Hawk and I were so over. I would love to ride in that Camaro.
I got out, rounded the car and grabbed my bag and laptop. Then I walked to the house.
If I was a different kind of woman, in other words I didn’t have my mother’s blood in my veins, I would have walked to the house slowly, considering my options, calming myself, building a plan of attack.
I did not do this. I stomped up to the house, opened the door, encountered a wave of strong garlic smells and stomped in.
My parents lived in a big house on a slight rise. Stairs dead ahead leading to a landing with a big window. Huge living room to the left that had a small den off of it at the front of the house, another small conservatory-like space behind the den also off the living room. Enormous kitchen to the right with a big area for the dining room table. Half bath and utility to the back of the kitchen that led to a garage. Wall to wall wool carpet throughout except the kitchen which was tiled. Three bedrooms and two baths upstairs, one shared, one off the master suite.
The garden level was an apartment that they’d rented out since I could remember to a woman named Mrs. Mayhew who had three cats. In her tenure in the apartment the cats had rotated due to kitty death, and, once, kitty desertion though Mrs. Mayhew contended it was kitty theft and I was prone to believe her since she treated those cats better than most people treated their children, but Mrs. Mayhew never rotated. She had been old as the hills for as long as I could remember. She was also a silent neighbor. No loud music, no loud parties, no stream of constant visitors. And best of all, she put up with Ginger because she admired Dad, adored Meredith and cared a lot about me.
Before Ginger and I moved out (I never moved home after graduating U of C – Ginger took longer and graduated high school by what we all considered a minor miracle), there were four bedrooms upstairs but after I moved out Dad had turned one of the smaller bedrooms into a master bath. And Dad, being Dad, and Meredith, being Meredith, meant the whole pad was well-maintained, well-decorated, homey, warm and comfortable.
Like it was right then with a fire burning in the grate of the living room fireplace and candles lit throughout.
But once I’d swept the house with a glance, seeing Dad was entertaining Hawk in the living room and the table was set for four, my gaze swung left again and I took in Dad in his armchair and Hawk on the couch, his back to me, his arm stretched across the back of the couch but his neck twisted to look over his shoulder at me.
I dropped my bags and opened my mouth to shout.
“Honey,” Dad got there before me, straightening out of his chair, a bottle of beer in his hand, “why didn’t you tell us Hawk was coming to dinner?”
“No bother! No bother!” Meredith’s voice came at me from the right where I looked to see her rushing into the room carrying a dishtowel. “We have plenty. He’s a big guy but I always make plenty. And Bax giving me the idea last night, I’d already planned for lasagna.”
I was forced to delay my tirade when Meredith hit the entry area at the same time Dad did. Dad leaned in to kiss me and I automatically tipped my head back to accept it. Then I turned to Meredith and bent to give her a kiss and she lifted one arm to add a shoulder hug because this was her way.
Then I straightened and turned to Hawk who was standing at the side of the couch, arms crossed on his chest, exuding badass cool while watching my welcome home.
Then I opened my mouth to yell.
Dad again got there before me when he announced, “I’ll just go whip up a cosmo.”
I turned to my father. “Can’t, Dad, after dinner, I have to work.”
His brows shot up. “But we’re having a family dinner.”
“I’m behind,” I explained.
Dad’s expression changed and I knew it so well I could sketch a perfect rendition of it while blindfolded (that was, if I could sketch).
Lecture Face.
“Gwendolyn, how many times do I have to tell you, do not procrastinate.”
“Your Dad’s right, honey, whenever you procrastinate you get all stressy and in a bad mood,” Meredith put in.
“Don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today,” Dad went on as if Meredith didn’t speak.
“Then you eat food you shouldn’t eat and go out and buy clothes you shouldn’t buy and get even more grumpy,” Meredith continued like Dad didn’t speak.
“Peace of mind, that’s what good time management skills bring you, peace of mind,” Dad carried on.
“And you wouldn’t have to take on so many clients if you didn’t have to pay off your credit cards,” Meredith kept going.
“I’m always telling you, you need to learn focus,” Dad persisted.
“And I’m always telling you, accessorize. Accessories are the key. You just need to spend your hard earned money on a few, fabulous core pieces in your wardrobe and you can make an entirely new outfit by just switching out a scarf!” Meredith declared then finished. “And scarves cost way less than owning ten little black dresses.”
“I own thirteen little black dresses,” I amended because, seriously, it was important to keep track.
“See!” Meredith cried.
It occurred to me then that Hawk was watching me, a thirty-three year old woman who had been taking care of herself for over a decade, get lectured like I was a teenager about the same time a buzzer went off in the kitchen.
“Bread’s done!” Meredith exclaimed.
“Soup’s up,” Dad added on a smile aimed in Hawk’s direction. “You can thank me later, son, for the joy you are about to experience.”
“Everyone to the table,” Meredith ordered, hurrying toward the kitchen.
“I need to talk to Hawk,” I announced.
“Later, honey, Mer’s garlic bread waits for no man… or woman,” Dad grinned at me and moved toward the table.
My head turned toward Hawk to see him moving my way. Robbed of my opportunity to lay into him and maybe explain we were over in sign language or go into a trance and speak in tongues or possibly tap out my message in Morse Code, hoping one or the other would penetrate his macho man anti-communication fortress, I decided to communicate my extreme unhappiness by glaring.
Hawk ignored my glare and I knew he was doing this when he got close, hooked me around the neck, yanked me to his side and propelled me to the table, head bent to my ear where he murmured, “See you’re stressy and in a bad mood.”
He lifted his head and I twisted my neck to look up at him and see he was grinning.
“Just curious, but do you know how much contract killers cost and, incidentally, would you have a recommendation?”
We had made it to the table when I uttered my comment and Hawk stopped us, turned me full frontal into his arms, threw his head back and burst out laughing.
I stared, completely forgetting my snit.
He had a great laugh, it was deep and resonant and I could tell it came straight from the gut.
Then, still laughing, he bent his head and kissed me. No tongue but it was a kiss, a definite kiss, hard and longish and right in front of my Dad while standing at my family’s dinner table.
When his mouth broke from mine and he lifted his head, I blinked then snapped, “You can’t kiss me in my parents’ house in front of my Dad!”
“Just did, Sweet Pea,” Hawk returned.
“Well don’t do it again.” I was still snapping.
“Then don’t be so hilarious,” Hawk shot back. “You make me laugh, babe, I’m warnin’ you now, when I’m done, I’m gonna kiss you.”
“I didn’t mean to be hilarious,” I explained snottily.
“Well, you were.”
“How can I control it if I don’t know when you’re going to find something funny?”
“Guess you better brace, babe, ‘cause, the way you are, it could happen at any time.”
I opened my mouth to retort when I realized we had an audience. My head turned and I saw Dad smiling what I knew by sheer instinct (because I certainly hadn’t seen it before) was a father’s, knowing, contented smile, warm with the knowledge his daughter had hooked Mr. Very, Very Right. I also saw Meredith standing next to Dad wearing hot pads on her hands, carrying a tray of lasagna, sporting her own smile that stated plainly she’d married Mr. Very, Very Right and she was pleased as punch her beloved stepdaughter had followed in her footsteps.
Totally… flipping… screwed.
I broke away from Hawk and declared, “I think I’ll take that cosmo now.”
Dad chuckled, moved toward the fridge and stated, “Don’t think so honey, you have to work later.” He kept moving but looked over his shoulder at Hawk. “Another beer?”
Another? Beer?
How long had he been there and since when did muscular, body-like-a-temple hot guys drink beer?
“Yeah,” Hawk replied and I looked up at him.
“You drink beer?”
He looked down at me. “Yeah,” he repeated.
“Won’t that give you a gut?” I asked.
“Life’s short, babe, you gotta live it every once in awhile and you don’t drink water with homemade lasagna and garlic bread.”
Well, his mother was half-Italian; he would know.
I decided to ignore Hawk so I turned to the kitchen. “I’ll help get the food.”
“Thanks, sweetie,” Meredith mumbled, placing the lasagna on a curly, wrought iron hot plate in the middle of the table.
Dad got me a diet grape, himself and Hawk a fresh beer, replenished Meredith’s red wine and Meredith and I loaded up the table with fresh, hot garlic bread, a huge salad and every bottle of salad dressing known to man. Then everyone passed the food around and loaded up their plates while commenting on how good the food looked and smelled (or at least Dad and I did this, Hawk just loaded up his plate).