Chapter Six #3
really fucking quick, after he hovered close at her back when she was saying
goodbye to her family.
She was standing in the arched entryway that led off her
foyer into her living room.
“Lottie—”
“And,” she cut him off, “to go back to our discussion at the
grocery store, you may have lived with that woman for two years, but I am
a woman, so I know the plays she was making, and they were not what you think
they were.”
Mo shook his head. “We’re not doing this.”
She started to move forward. “We are so totally doing this.”
He took a step back and she stopped.
“We’re not, because we can’t,” he declared.
“We can, we are, and I’ll get us started. Backtracking in a
belated effort at being an adult, you should know, anyone else, no way I’d be
in a nightie making breakfast.”
He clenched his teeth because he had an idea he knew what
was coming next.
“I was in a nightie making breakfast with you because you’re
hot and I wanted you to jump me,” she kept at him.
That was what he thought was coming.
He still knew better.
“The minute you opened the door to me, you took a step
back,” he bit out.
“That’s because you’re enormous, Mo. There’s a lot of you.”
On that, she advanced again.
Mo took another step back.
She stopped.
But she didn’t stop talking.
“Now let me share my first reaction to seeing your face
through the peephole, something you didn’t witness, and the exact time I
decided I was pretty sure I was gonna want you to
jump me. Okay, I’ll admit, the amount of you took me by surprise, but in no way
was I withdrawing because I didn’t like what I saw, or I feared it. It was just
surprise followed closely with the desire to climb you all the way to the top.”
Shit, fuck, he couldn’t listen to her talking this way.
“Lottie—”
She took another step forward.
He took a step back, hit her coffee table and began to skirt
it.
She stopped so he stopped.
“You were a dick to me, Mo.”
Fuck.
He knew they’d get there.
He just didn’t want to be there because she was right.
He’d been a dick.
“I thought you were playing games,” he explained.
“You didn’t keep that secret,” she reminded him.
“I also needed you to back off.”
“You didn’t keep that secret either.”
“So how about you remember I need you to back off?” he
suggested.
“No way in hell,” she returned.
“Lottie, listen—”
She advanced again, he retreated, and she didn’t stop until
his calves hit couch and there was nowhere to go.
Which meant she got in his space but didn’t touch him.
But her in his space was bad enough.
Christ.
“Let me make myself perfectly clear. I like you, Mo.” She
leaned closer. “A lot.”
“We’re not going there,” he grunted.
“We so are.”
“We’re not.”
She put a hand to his chest and her eyes warmed as her voice
went soft and sweet. “We are, baby.”
“We’re not because there is no way I’m gonna
be in the position of being inside you and my attention all about you something
that would give some whackjob the opportunity to get
the drop on us and put a bullet in the back of my head.”
Her face went slack and her hand curled into a fist on his
chest.
But he wasn’t done with her.
“After that, he’ll drag you out from under my dead body, and
no one will get the warning you’ve been taken because I’m dead in your bed and
he’s got you somewhere, making you wish you were as dead as me.”
She pressed her fist into his chest but said nothing.
“Lottie, you get this is serious, but what you gotta really get is that I need to be focused and
not on how badly I wanna make love to you, but on how
badly I wanna keep you safe and healthy, physically,
but more, mentally.”
“Okay,” she whispered, understanding the intelligence of
that right away, and that was his girl. “We’ll wait until it’s over.”
Goddammit.
“We won’t do it then either.”
She showed her shock then her hurt before she said, her
voice rising, “Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t cut me up too much, the likes of Tammy
dumping me, but I start something with the likes of you and you get the urge to
move on, then do it, where do you think that’ll leave me?”
“Have you thought about the fact that I might not get that
urge?” she asked.
“They move on, Lottie. They all move on.”
“I’m not them.”
“You can do better than me and both of us know it.”
They did.
They both did.
And he knew she did when she dropped her head, took her hand
from him and stepped away.
Now that…
That cut him up.
Until she tilted her head back and speared him with her
gaze.
“What’s better than you, Mo?” she snapped.
“More money. Better lookin’. Trips
to Tiffany’s.”
“You think I give one real shit about all
that?”
Mo fully clicked into a conversation he thought he’d already
been fully clicked into and he did that by realizing somewhere along the line
he’d made her angry.
Very angry.
“Lo—” he began.
“First,” she bit off, “you’re hot. Not a little hot, a
lot. You might not be everybody’s cup of tea, but neither am I or anyone
else. But trust me, Mo, I wanted to climb you like a tree the first time I laid
eyes on you and Tammy would have gotten down on her knees to beg you to have
her back. And that has a lot to do with you just being you, but the kind of
woman she is, it also has to do with you looking the way you do and also the
fact it’s pretty clear by her behavior you know how to use your cock.”
He’d had no complaints on that, as far as he knew, but he
was not going to share that with Lottie.
Even if he was, he wouldn’t get the shot because she kept
going.
“So you’re hot, and that’s my call to make, you can’t make
it, so I don’t wanna hear another word about it,” she
clipped. “Second, my dad promised us everything from trips to the
Riviera to castles in the sky. He didn’t deliver on one single promise
he made, but more, he wasn’t even enough of a man to fight the urge to hit a
table in order to see to his woman and his girls. You’re man enough to fight
the urge to fuck me in order to make me safe. What else would I get if you let
me have the rest? I don’t know, you do, and I want a shot at that.”
“Lottie—”
“And I don’t want Tiffany’s, Mo. If I did, I’d earn the
money to buy something there. I doubt you’re on food stamps working for Hawk,
but I also make a good living and if a woman’s about the living a man can earn,
she’s not much of a woman. I need a man with ambition and drive and a belief in
what he’s doing. I don’t need a man to drive me to Tiffany’s. I got my own
damned car.”
“Baby—” he whispered, with all she said, unable to stop that
word from leaking out of his mouth.
But that was all he got out.
“I don’t know what those bitches did to you, since my guess
is Tammy wasn’t the only one. And I don’t know what happened to you in
Afghanistan. I don’t even really know you. All I know, and I know it
good, Mo, is that I wanna find out.”
“This isn’t smart,” he said gently.
“Now? Or ever?” she demanded to know.
“Now.”
And possibly ever.
But he wasn’t going to get into that with her right then.
“Call Hawk and tell him to find this guy, Mo.”
“They’re workin’ on it.”
“Tell them to work faster.”
He said nothing because all his attention was set on
stopping himself from smiling.
Christ, she really was something.
“Do you have a problem with me stripping?” she asked.
Mo now had no trouble not smiling.
“I don’t like men watching you take your clothes off,” he
told her honestly.
“This is an issue because that’s what I do to pay the bills
and I like doing it.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“Can you get over it?”
He didn’t know how he’d feel if he wasn’t there every night,
watching the crowd watching her take her clothes off.
Maybe.
But doubtfully.
He gave her more honesty.
“It’s an issue, Lottie.”
“I’m not getting any younger,” she announced.
Outside his time in the Army and on Hawk’s crew, most his
life he’d spent with women.
So on that, he kept his mouth shut.
“And I want kids,” she went on.
He kept his mouth shut on that one too, even if he knew it
already with how she was with her nephews, and he liked it a lot.
“Do you want kids?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“How many?”
“Two or three.”
“I’m not getting any younger, Mo.”
Well, hell.
Now he was fighting smiling again.
“You aren’t either,” she pointed out.
“Right,” he murmured.
“We’ll work it out,” she declared.
He drew an audible breath into his nostrils.
“We’re gonna work it out, Mo,” she
assured him.
“It’ll break me, you get shot of me.”
Her body turned to stone at his admission, her face did too,
and she stared at him.
“You’re a good woman. A class act. Smart. Funny. Love your
nephews and show it. They love you back, so much, and you make it safe, so they
feel free to show it. You got sass. You got talent. You believe in what you do
and go all out to be the best at it there is. You’re together. You’re kind to
your friends. And you can cook. I want a shot at that, Lottie. I wanna find out how much better you can get. But I already
have a clue, and havin’ that clue, I know, you give
it, then take it away, it won’t be like Tammy. It’ll break me. Now, knowin’ that, where you at?”
She didn’t wait even a beat.
She ordered, “Call Hawk and tell him to work faster.”
Mo no longer had the urge to spank her.
He had other urges and he had to lock himself down in order
to fight them.
It was then he found out she’d take hold of any opportunity
she was given.
Even going after what she wanted when he was weak.
“What happened in Afghanistan, baby?”
“Lost two brothers and killed people who were probably
civilians.”
And it was then he learned she went after what she wanted so
she could give him what he needed.
“You holding on with all of that?” she asked gently.
“This is why I keep busy.”
“And why you only sleep four hours a night.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, Mo,” she murmured, both words heavy with the weight of
compassion he saw in her eyes. “I can’t touch you, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, I can’t touch you now. But I can promise I’m gonna take care of you, Mo.”
“That’s a tall order, Lottie.”
And she just had a piece of Afghanistan.
She had no idea about all the rest.
“I’m goal-oriented, baby,” she said quietly.
Mo stood still, eyes on her, and breathed.
“Do you need to hand me off to another one of Hawk’s men?”
she offered.
Oh, hell no.
“No one is on you but me,” he growled.
She nodded immediately.
Then she smiled.
Not victoriously.
Gratefully.
“You wanna watch TV?” she asked.
“Sure,” he answered.
“Game’s on,” she said.
“Whatever,” he muttered.
“A movie?”
“Works for me.”
“Mo?”
“What?”
“Thank you, honey.”
“You need to stop it, baby,” he said, going soft.
She nodded, a lot and fast. “Right. Right. All
professional.”
Like she could pull that off.
But at least she’d have a mind.
And after that…
He’d let himself think of what was after that when it was
actually after.
“I’ll make popcorn,” she said.
“I’ll do a perimeter check.”
She smiled huge at him.
Huge and happy.
So…
Right.
When all was said and done, he might come out a winner for
once, or he might be ground to dust.
But he knew right then it didn’t matter which way that
broke.
Just as long and as much as humanly possible in the
meantime, Mo had a shot to make Lottie happy.