Chapter Six
Savor It
Roisin
“I like that, Ro. I thought you were supposed to be a Dirty Savage. You’re fucking skittish as a mouse, Wyatt.” I studied his awkward angle, the man had his back so turned, the seatbelt was half over his neck.
“Sorry, Ro-Sheen, Turn.” He stressed my name, enunciating it hard before his free hand shot up to point. “This exit.”
“Why did you talk about me like that?” I asked, causing his attention to whip back toward me.
“What?” The bewilderment was plain in his voice. “You were driving like a maniac.”
“No. Before. You called me ‘this one’– like you got three more waiting back at the house.”
The tension left his face as his gaze slowly swept my features. I bugged my eyes, waiting for an answer.
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” He quietly began.
“You didn’t.” I shut it down before he could carry on.
A sharp blast of a horn sounded behind us and I whipped around to confront it, raising my finger just as Wyatt nudged my arm.
“Go. Left.”
I dropped a glance to my arm and then him in that corner he’d chosen for himself before settling back in my seat and accelerating.
“This isn’t the way to East Alton,” I pointed out.
He shook his head, “No, it isn’t. I got some business to handle before we leave the area completely.
A short while later, we arrived at a cabin.
“This some kind of Honeymoon Suite?” I teased.
He snorted and tipped his head to shoot me a look, “Those things are usually planned, I didn’t know until after breakfast that I’d be ending today with a wife.”
“Oh,” I slid the car into park, and he abruptly shut the engine off and removed the keys.
“Hey!” I yelled.
He got out of the car and shut the door, leaving me to scramble after him.
“Give me my keys back,” I darted behind him thinking to clip them off his finger, but he tossed them in the air, and caught them with the other hand.
Then he snared my fingers in his and cut me a look over his shoulder when we reached the door.
“Be cool here,” he grunted.
I squinted at him, unsure of what that even meant.
“How am I supposed to do that exactly?” I hissed.
“It’s easy. Just don’t be an asshole.”
An indignant huff shot from me, “That’s high talk. You’re the King of Assholes as best I can tell.”
As luck would have it, the door opened just as I laid my charge. A deep rumble of laughter sounded from inside and a tall, muscular man with an eyepatch appeared in the doorway. He snagged Wyatt into a hug and thumped his back several times.
“Jesus, Brother. You had me worried,” the giant exclaimed.
“It’s all good. I had to pick up my wife.”
The smile on the giant’s face froze and he turned, following Wyatt with that one good eye as he ventured further into the stranger’s home.
“Wh–?” His head whipped back and that eye focused on me. “You comin’ in, sweetheart?”
“Get in here, Ro.” Wyatt snapped, causing me to reconsider if I was entering or not.
The giant gave me two seconds to figure it out, then followed after my husband, leaving me in the threshold, and the door wide.
“Zig, what the fuck? A wife–?”
“Who the hell is Zig?” I followed after them, giving the door a fling as I did so.
Wyatt flopped down at the kitchen table and waved at the giant.
“This is Henny. Henny, this is Ro, my wife.”
Henny got two beers from the refrigerator and opened the first one before passing it to Wyatt.
“What the fuck do your kids think?” Henny asked, twisting the lid off the second.
I cleared my throat pointedly, when it was a breath from his lips, and his gaze swung to me.
“You– want a beer, honey?” He finally caught on.
Wyatt flubbed his lips, “You better card her, she might not be old enough.”
Henny howled like it was the best joke ever while I squinted at the pair of them.
“Daddy?” A voice called from upstairs.
Henny set the beer on the table and held up a finger as he trotted that way.
“You really intend to keep those keys.” I had wondered how long he’d tolerate it, but I had to test things where I could.
“Mhm.” He nodded.
“Took you long enough, Sean would have made me pull over before we left the parking lot.” I laughed.
“That's why you gunned it?”
I gave an ‘of course’-style nod and he smiled.
“Girl, you got no business behind the wheel and you know it.”
“I was fucking with you.”
“Mhm.” He sounded highly unconvinced, and his side gaze said as much.
“How old are you?” I laughed, drawing closer to the table, and sitting down beside him.
“You don’t want to know.” He groaned, hauling from his beer, before he offered it out to me.
“I wouldn’t have asked, if I didn’t want to know.” I countered, before taking it from him. When I sipped and he still hadn’t answered, I decided to go another route, “Does this house belong to one of your kids? Is that your grandbaby up there calling out for her father?”
He swerved toward me with his upper body, snagged the beer, and heavily enunciated what I thought would be his only response, “No.”
He killed half that bottle in one swig, before elaborating, “Henny isn’t my son. He is my VP. The kid is his, and the house belongs to her mother who is currently in the hospital with cancer.”
“Be down soon,” Henny called.
“Take your time,” I chimed back, without thinking.
Wyatt shot me a subtle wink.
“So– College huh?” he asked, setting the bottle on the kitchen table, and slowly rolling it.
“Yeah, I'm going to Edwardsville.”
He gave a slow nod, not taking his eye off the label he was peeling from the beer bottle , “Well– Congrats, College Girl. You have gone and married yourself to a forty-year-old veteran. A man who has four adult children, all but one of whom is likely older than you.”
I sensed his eyes on me, and cursed myself, unsure how long I’d been sitting there slack jawed and processing that information dump. The smirk on his face said he’d savored every second of my being off kilter, though.