Chapter 3
Everly had picked this specific restaurant on purpose. It was one she frequented often, and she knew, or was at least familiar with, everyone who worked there. So, if she came up missing, there was a better chance they’d remember she was there and that she hadn’t been alone.
But other than the fact that he made her want to offer her naked body laid out on a platter for him to devour like some sort of pagan sacrifice to a very old god, Hawke had given her no reason to fear being around him.
Nervous as a teenager and sexually frustrated?
Sure. Who wouldn’t be around a man who took her breath away with one searing look from those hypnotic eyes of his?
But she had yet to feel afraid. If anything, weirdly, she felt safer than she had in a long time.
Waving to the owner’s son behind the counter, she led Hawke to her favorite corner booth.
The place was small, only eight booths and a few tables in the middle, painted University of Texas orange and decorated with stars and longhorns, and it smelled like roasting meat, barbecue sauce, and cornbread.
Everly’s stomach growled in anticipation.
Hawke raised one eyebrow. “Hungry?”
“Starving,” Everly told him. She had no shame when it came to food.
The waitress appeared, the newish blonde one with the braces, and Everly looked at Hawke, wondering if he would let her order or be one of those douchebags who thought he needed to prove what a man he was by ordering for her. Which she would promptly shut down.
He didn’t. Instead, he smiled and waved his hand at the empty tabletop as if to say, “Do your worst.”
Shaking her head at the offer of a menu, she started rattling off her order, and had to resist the urge to laugh as his eyes widened more with every addition.
The waitress, however, who’d waited on Everly before, was not surprised in the least. Brows furrowed, she scribbled down the order.
“And a diet Coke, please,” Everly finished.
Unfazed, the waitress turned to Hawke. “And for you?”
“I don’t suppose you have vodka?”
“No,” she said. “But we have just about any kind of beer you’d want on draft.”
“I’ll take a pale ale,” he told her. “Whatever you have.”
“Anything to eat?”
He shook his head and nodded at Everly. “I’ll share with her.”
The waitress barked out a short laugh. “You might want to order your own, mister.”
He smiled back, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll share.”
“Okay.” She didn’t sound convinced as she closed her notepad. “Be right back with those drinks.”
Everly watched him as he scanned the restaurant, stopping at each possible exit as though committing the layout to memory. “Do you always drink so much?”
His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “I’m sorry?”
The waitress set their drinks on the table, and Everly thanked her with a smile before taking a sip of her soda. “Alcohol,” she clarified. “Do you always drink alcohol? It’s all I’ve ever seen you drink.”
Hawke saluted her with his mug before taking a tentative sip of his beer, then a longer swallow.
He set it back down on the table and wiped one corner of his mouth with his napkin.
“Well, being that the only places you’ve seen me so far are at a bar and a restaurant, I’m not surprised.
But no…” He appeared amused. “Alcohol is not the only thing I drink.”
Well, that didn’t work. He hadn’t been drinking the night before, and she thought he would say so and prove her earlier point. But it looked like she was going to have to be blunt. “Why did you pretend not to remember me?”
This time, her question didn’t seem to surprise him. “I wasn’t pretending. I see a lot of people every night. It took me a minute.”
He was lying. For one, she wasn’t easy to forget.
And she wasn’t saying that out of some misbegotten place of ego.
It was mostly because of her crazy hair and her…
hearing challenges. Though she wore hearing aids that were able to pick out certain low-pitched sounds, it still sounded like it was coming through a wall of water, or a wall.
She tried to speak and act as normal as possible, but she knew people still noticed.
“That’s bullshit. Try again.” Leaning forward, she took another sip of soda as she waited for him to come up with a better answer to her question.
Hawke’s eyes dropped to her lips wrapped around the straw, then lower, lighting on her breasts for a half second before coming back up to her face.
He tried another tactic, equally as false as the first. “Okay. I wasn’t sure if you remembered me, and I didn’t want you to feel embarrassed, so I introduced myself again. Why is that strange?”
Oh, he was smooth. “It’s not strange. It’s just more bullshit.”
He sat forward so fast she reacted instinctively, sitting back to put as much distance between them as she could. Her breath rushed from her lungs, the air between them suddenly charged.
His eyes drove into her. Apparently, he was done being vague. “What do you want from me, Everly?”
“I…” What did she want from him? Answers? Yes. His help? Definitely. But was that all?
She wasn’t sure.
Everly was saved from answering by the waitress bearing a heavy tray of food.
As she set plate after plate of brisket, beans, corn, chicken, cornbread, and coleslaw on the table, her movements dispersed the waves of tension convoluting the air.
Hawke gave her a tight smile and sat back, lifting his mug to his lips as he turned to gaze out the window as he waited for the waitress to leave.
It took Everly a few more seconds to recover. “Thank you,” she told the waitress, her eyes dropping to the feast in front of her. Eventually the mouthwatering smell brought her back to the here and now and her rumbling stomach.
Hawke touched her hand to get her attention. “Surely you’re not really going to eat all that?” he asked when she tore her eyes from the food.
So, she’d been right the night before. He’d figured her out already.
Everly fought back a sigh. It normally took people a few times before they knew she couldn’t hear.
Most of the time she had to tell them. And once they knew, it always changed things.
People treated her differently. Guys made lewd remarks when they thought she wasn’t looking.
Girls stopped including her. She hated it.
But it was what it was. However, she didn’t want this man to see her as weak in any way, shape, or form.
Everly searched his face, but she found none of that in his expression, and she sensed nothing different in the way he regarded her.
Curling her fingers into a fist to try to disperse the tingling his touch had left, she wondered for a moment if he was right.
His presence was making her lose her appetite.
Not because he was abhorrent in any way.
Quite the opposite. Just the touch of his fingers pushed all thoughts of food out of her head and made her hungry for something else altogether.
But the moment was brief as the aroma of the restaurant’s famous sauce reached her nose and her mouth began to water.
She shrugged and picked up a chicken thigh, sinking her teeth into the perfectly cooked meat.
This place really had the best food around.
It was a shame they didn’t get more business, but then again, Everly wouldn’t come here as often if they did.
She didn’t normally like crowds. They tended to disorient her, especially if she was by herself.
Hawke sipped his beer as she ate, the expression on his face one of mild amusement as she plowed through each and every plate, but Everly wasn’t about to play the wilting female just because there was a big, strong, male around.
When she was finished, he ordered her another soda and himself another beer, then waited until the empty dishes were cleared before he finally spoke again. “I have to admit, I kind of thought you were ordering so much food just to drain me of cash, but I see I was wrong.”
Everly leaned back in her seat and licked her fingers. “I wouldn’t be so petty. I’m a mature woman, not some silly teenager.”
“I’m beginning to see that about you.” He made a show of glancing around the table, and even looked underneath before he cocked one eyebrow in disbelief. “What? No notebook?”
At this point, Everly saw no reason to skirt around the issue. “Not for this conversation, no. This one is completely off the record.”
Lacing his fingers together on the table, he rested his weight on his forearms. “So, again, what is it you want from me, Everly?”
She took a deep breath. When she’d gone to the club the night before, she wasn’t sure she’d find what she needed.
But after Hawke’s little display in the office, she now knew her instincts had been right.
Still, knowing that didn’t calm her nerves.
If anything, it made her more nervous to have to ask this of someone like him.
“I need your help to break into Parasupe.”
If he was surprised by her request, he didn’t show it. “So, I was right when I said your little local business article was a ruse.”
“Yes.”
“Do you really work for the paper?”
“Yes.”
“Does your boss know it’s a ruse?”
“No.”
“What makes you think I’d be willing, or able, to help you with something like that? Breaking into a place of business is illegal. Besides, what could they possibly have done to warrant such behavior? Parasupe is an environmental protection agency.”
“I don’t think people like you worry about such trivial things as laws.”
He eyed her warily. “What do you mean, ‘people like me’?”
She refused to squirm under his stare. “People who aren’t really…” She looked around to make sure no one was within hearing range. Or lip-reading range, for that matter. “People.”
His head tilted slightly to the side, a smile teasing the corners of his lips. “I’m not a people?”
Mimicking his posture, she put her arms on the table and leaned into them.
His smell came to her, dark spice and fresh rain, and she inhaled it deep into her lungs.
That alone was enough to bring heat to her abdomen and make her thighs clench and her breasts swell, aching to be touched.
She wondered what it would be like to be wanted by a male such as him.
Would he be as domineering in bed as he liked to be in life?
Or would it be the one place he liked to give up control?
She swallowed hard at the thought. “I think you know what I mean.”
But he wasn’t going to make it easy for her. “No, Everly. I’m afraid that I don’t.” He made a point to look at his watch. “And unless you’ve got something better to discuss than whether or not I’m actually a person, I really ought to be getting back.”
His sudden coolness toward her had her second-guessing herself. Had she imagined the heat between them last night? The way he’d looked? The way he’d smelled her? Was it all in her head that his order for her to leave and forget about him was anything more than just that? An order?
Not him trying to alter her memories?
As she sat in perplexed silence, he slid out of the booth and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. He threw some cash on the table. “Good luck with your article. I’m sorry I can’t help you.” His eyes slid over her face and hair, then he gave her a smile and turned to walk away.
It was strangely wistful, and Everly had the most dreadful feeling she’d never see him again.
She scrambled for a way to keep him there. “But, how will you get back to the club?” That may have come out louder than she’d meant it to, as the entire restaurant, and not just Hawke, stopped what they were doing and stared at her.
She lowered her voice. “How will you get back? I drove you here.”
Again, with the amused twinkle in his eyes.
“I’ll manage.” He started to leave again, but turned back to say, “Perhaps I’ll see you at The Caves sometime.
Good luck with…whatever it is you’re after, Everly.
” Then he strode out the door and left her sitting there alone like she’d just been walked out on by the best blind date ever.
Everly sat back with a huff and tried to ignore the sympathetic looks she was getting from the wait staff and one other occupied table toward the front—with three younger women sitting at it.
Finally, she told them all, “It’s okay. It wasn’t a date.
Just trying to get some info for an article I’m writing.
” With relieved smiles and nods, they went back to their business.
Looking out the window, Everly watched Hawke stride across the parking lot.
Her eyes narrowed when he didn’t head to the sidewalk as one would expect or pull out his phone to call someone for a ride, but rather veered to the left, where the lot ended and some actually decent-sized trees and scrub brush encroached.
Between one blink and the next he was gone.
Just a normal person, my ass.
She may be deaf, but her eyesight was better than most people’s, as was her sense of smell.
Perhaps to overcompensate for the loss of hearing.
She also had a spot-on memory, and she could’ve kicked herself for allowing him to make her doubt herself.
Now that he was gone, and she could think straight again, she knew she’d been right about what she’d seen.
Both last night at the club and just now.
Hawke was no ordinary man.