Chapter Seven #2
had them, I said, “It’s unusual for a dude, but Smithie’s a multi-tasker.”
Carla gazed down at her ankle again.
“Can I call him?” I asked. “He’ll want to take you to the
hospital.”
She gave me her eyes. “He wants to be around to look out for
you.”
I jerked my head to Mo. “He gave me someone who’ll look out
for me. If he knows you’re hurting, he’ll want to look out for you.
And please, let me call him. If he finds out we didn’t tell him this, he’ll be
ticked, at me. And I hate it when Smithie’s ticked at me.”
This was a lie. Smithie was all bark, no bite. I didn’t tick
him off on purpose, but I didn’t avoid it should such an occasion arise.
Finally, I got a grin from her which meant I got out of my
squat, smiling back, then moved to my station.
Mo, for the first time ever in that room, did not follow me.
He stayed close to Carla.
As I grabbed my purse to get out my phone, I watched out of
the corners of my eyes and saw that he didn’t murmur reassuring words or offer
to help hold the bag of ice or do anything but give her his solid, assuring
presence.
But he gave her his solid, assuring presence. She was
worried. She was in pain. And he gave her what he had to give.
All right.
Seriously.
I hoped that man was good in bed because I was totally
falling in love with him.
I called Smithie to come and see to Carla.
After that, I turned, leaned back against my station, and
watched Mo openly while I called my mom.
His silver gaze came to me.
And there it was.
A soft look from Mo.
Jeez, I so wanted to jump him.
I gave him a smile.
His eyes dropped to it, but he didn’t smile back.
And again, I wanted to pounce on him.
Mom answered the phone.
“Lottie? Is everything okay?”
She sounded awake and alert, but not alarmed. Just awake and
alert even though I knew I had to have woken her.
This was because she was the mother of a Rock Chick and the
Queen of the Corvette Calendar. She had a lot of practice with being woken up
in the middle of the night, needing to do it and be alert.
“Hey, Mom. Sorry to call late, but Carla turned her ankle
bad coming off stage tonight. Mo had a look at it and thinks she needs to have
it checked at the hospital. She needs someone to go relieve her babysitter
until she gets home.”
“Mo?”
Shit.
Wrapped up in all that was going on, I not only forgot about
dinner on Sunday, I forgot I’d told Jet about Mo coming, but not my mother.
And obviously my sister had left relaying that news to me.
“My, uh…” I gave Mo big eyes.
His dark eyebrows shot up.
Dark brows that went with the dark stubble he normally
sported (except at times like now, right after his shower, when he’d shaved)
and then there was dark hair on his arms.
This possibly meant dark hair on his chest, and other,
better places, something I could not wait to discover.
My thoughts turned to the choice he’d given me at our first
meeting of being in the room with him while he showered. Considering current
events, that was a choice I no longer had.
And that was a crying shame.
But indisputably prudent.
“New boyfriend,” I finished, my voice kinda
husky.
His lips twitched before his attention turned because
Smithie was bowling through the door.
The bossman didn’t even look at me. He went direct to Carla,
concern evident on his face.
God, I loved that guy.
“You have a new boyfriend?” Mom asked in my ear.
I focused on the task at hand.
“She has a what?” I heard boomed over the phone
before I could answer.
Tex was awake.
Not a surprise.
Definitely a wildcard.
Tex had no kids. Tex’s history was a long story, and not
much of it, until he met Indy Nightingale, was good. And one could say,
considering after he met Indy he’d been shot, clubbed in the head, kidnapped
and blew up a warehouse, that wasn’t good for him either.
But Tex would tell you all that had been a hoot.
And Tex was the finest man who ever breathed.
But he was a character.
A booming character, in all ways that could be,
including audibly.
And the years that he’d been involved with the Rock Chicks
(this being from the beginning, when he rescued Indy after she was kidnapped,
this being when he got himself shot for that effort), plus the years he’d been
married to my mom, he’d adopted all of us.
Especially me and Jet.
He was not a man who would hold my hand at a fair and shout
how he needed to get cotton candy for his best girl.
He was a man who would run into the burning building me, my
sister or especially my mother was in, even if there was little chance he would
find us alive.
He’d risk his life, and give it, to try.
Obviously, I adored him.
“You’ll meet him Sunday,” I told Mom. “Listen, can you help
Carla out?”
“We’ll meet him Sunday,” I heard Mom say, not to me, to Tex.
“His name is Mo,” she went on.
“Mo? Hawk Delgado’s Mo?” Tex boomed.
Shit.
Of course Tex knew Mo.
Great.
My eyes went to Mo to see him standing guard over Carla
while Smithie prodded her ankle.
From Mom to Tex, “I don’t know, sweetheart.” To me, “Does
this boyfriend work for Hawk Delgado?”
“Um…yeah,” I said.
“Yes,” Mom told Tex.
“Well, all right!” Tex bellowed. “Boy’s as big as a house,
built tough as a tank and he ain’t no chatterbox.
He’s over, I don’t gotta listen to him blather on
about a play-by-play of the last Broncos game while I’m watchin’
me a Bruce Lee film. Tell Lottie I approve.”
I nearly giggled, even though I had no idea who made him
listen to a play-by-play of the last Broncos game. All of the Hot Bunch were
Broncos fans. But none of them were men to hang at Tex and Mom’s house with
their one hundred and fifty cats.
Though, I had a feeling they’d dig on Bruce Lee films.
“Tex approves,” Mom told me.
“Great,” I replied, now with a smile in my voice.
“I still haven’t met him yet, Lottie,” she warned.
Mom was going to love Mo.
“You will Sunday,” I reminded her. “Now about Carla.”
“Text us her address, honey. We’ll head over there as soon’s we’re dressed.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I murmured.
“Anytime, darlin’ girl,” she murmured back. “Love you.”
“Love you too. And tell Tex I love him.”
To Tex, “Lottie sends her love.”
A low boom of “Sheeee-it.”
I smiled.
That meant Tex loved me too.
“Later, Mom.”
“See you Sunday, Lottie.”
We disconnected as I watched Mo lift Carla like she was a
sheet draped over his arms.
My nipples tingled and my thoughts went where they
shouldn’t.
That being my hope he was just as much of a powerhouse in
bed.
He carried her behind the screen so she could dress.
“I’m takin’ her to the hospital,” Smithie informed me.
“Good,” I replied.
Mo came out from behind the screen.
“Mo’s gonna help me get her to my
truck. You lock the door behind us,” Smithie ordered. “And don’t leave this
room. Mo’ll be back as soon as we get Carla in the
truck.”
I nodded.
Mo scowled at me.
“I’ll lock the door, Mo,” I assured.
He scowled some more before he dipped his chin.
I turned my attention to the screen, thus Carla, and called.
“Mom and Tex are heading over to your place as soon as they get dressed. You
might want to call your sitter.” I paused, “And warn her about Tex.”
“I’ll do it in the car. Thanks, Lottie,” Carla called back.
“Don’t mention it. Do you need help back there?”
“Uh…kinda,” she answered.
Yeah, she needed to hit the hospital.
I gave Mo then Smithie a look and headed behind the screen.
We got Carla dressed, I went, grabbed her purse and gave it
to her before giving her a kiss on the cheek and a wish of good luck, and then
Mo picked her up to take her out to the car.
I trailed them close at Mo’s heels so he’d know I was doing
as ordered.
I started to lock the door practically before it was fully
closed.
When I turned back to the room, I realized it was weird to
be alone. The only time I’d been alone for days was in the shower.
I barely got Carla’s address texted to Mom and my false
eyelashes off to do a full makeup cleanup in order to do a full makeup put on
when there was a pounding at the door and a shout of, “Mo!”
Well, he didn’t jack around.
I felt my mouth turn up as I hustled to the door to let him
in.
He crowded my space to get back in, which meant back to
guarding me, and I realized with him, falling in love would probably be
incremental.
He’d do things like that, every day. Little ones, maybe some
big ones, but things like that every day that would make me fall more in love
with him.
Which, taken to its natural conclusion, meant, if we worked,
I’d be falling in love with him, little by little, more and more every day
until the day I died.
And that soooooo worked
for me.
I hid my smile at this thought and quickly backed out of his
space so I didn’t have the urge to pounce on him (or didn’t give in to the urge
I already had) and didn’t make things harder for him to fight his urge to
pounce on me.
I moved back to my station.
“I’m surprised you didn’t make Smithie call a bouncer to
take Carla out.”
“They have four persons of interest out there. They need
eyes on the crowd.”
My head whipped around to him. “Really?”
He dipped his chin.
“New guys?”
“All of them regulars who haven’t been back in a while. All
of them guys who creep the waitresses out. All of them guys who bouncers have
red flagged since they started coming. None of them guys who’ve been here since
the letter was sent.”
I felt a tickle at the back of my neck.
“You think one of them—?”
“I think they’ll have tails tonight and Hawk will have men
in all of their houses the minute they leave for work tomorrow morning and
we’ll know.”
Holy shit.
This might be over soon.
And holy shit.
They were searching houses.
“They’re searching houses?” I asked.
“Yup.”
“They can do that?”
“They can do whatever they want if they don’t get caught.”
Whoa.
“But, won’t it be inadmissible if they search like that?” I
queried. “I mean, they can’t get it to law enforcement and have the cops be
able to get a real search warrant if they find something illegally like that.”
Mo had moved closer to my station while I spoke.
What he didn’t do while doing that, arriving, and stopping
to stand close to my table was reply.
“Right, Mo?” I pressed.
He was silent a moment, but before I could push again, he
spoke.
“When this guy is caught, Lottie, the jury that matters
right now is still out as to what to do with him.”
“The jury that matters?”
“Hawk, Smithie…” he said no more.
“And you,” I whispered.
“I’ll make my case to Hawk that I get a say.”
“And that case will be?”
“I got claimed in a King Soopers. I don’t mind I did. As in
I way don’t mind it. And seein’ as I belong
to you, you belong to me, so I get a say.”
Oh my God.
I totally needed to pounce on my mound of hunkalicious, soon-to-be (I hoped) boyfriend.
“You need to move away, baby,” I whispered.
His head jerked. His eyes went dark. The muscles in his neck
stood out in a sexy way that was so not helping matters.
Then he moved back to the door.
I tried deep breathing.
Then I turned to my mirror to deal with my makeup.
It didn’t help because I could see Mo in the mirror.
His wide shoulders were to the wall and his gaze was cast to
the floor, I knew, so he wouldn’t be staring at me.
God.
They needed to catch this guy.
They so needed to catch this guy.
I moved a shaky hand toward my cleansing wipes.
And for right then, I got down to business.
“Start with your toes, Lottie.”
Mo’s deep voice coming to me in the dark told me not only
that he wasn’t asleep, but that he was hearing me toss and turn.
I rolled to my back and stared at the ceiling. “I tried.
It’s not working.”
“You want me to help?”
First, I loved that he asked.
Second, his voice coming to me from ten feet away when I
couldn’t cross that space, and he couldn’t cross that space, would be no help.
“You can’t help, Mo.”
He didn’t reply.
Suddenly, an idea hit me, I sat up and looked across the
moonlit room to the big body covering my couch.
“You need to ask Hawk to put someone else on me so we can
move this along.”
He did not move, except his mouth.
“Not gonna happen.”
“Mo—”
“Not. Gonna. Happen.”
I shut up.
I’d never heard him sound like that. His tone brooked no
argument, none whatsoever, in a way that even I knew I couldn’t argue with him,
and I could argue with anybody.
“I’m on you,” he stated.
“I know,” I said quietly.
“No one but me.”
Another thought occurred to me, one I did not like.
“You know, this isn’t woman-falling-for-her-bodyguard
syndrome, honey,” I told him. “It’s Lottie-falling-for-Mo syndrome. I’m not gonna get attached to some other guy on your crew.”
He was again silent but even if I couldn’t see his face, I
felt him communicating.
Strongly.
However, considering I couldn’t see his face, I didn’t know
what he was saying.
So I called, “Mo?”
“You’re fallin’ for me?”
Now his voice was low and tight.
Uh-oh.
Too soon?
“Well…uh—”
“Stop talking, Lottie.”
I shut my mouth.
“It isn’t about that,” he said.
“So what’s it about?”
“No one’s on you, but me.”
“I know, you said that, but if we—”
In a surge, he sat up.
I again shut up.
“I’ll give you something,” he declared.
Oh God.
I hoped it was fingering me to an orgasm.
Then I could give him a handjob, something I was relatively
certain I could do at the same time looking out for a bad guy so I could warn
Mo so he could neutralize him before getting a bullet in his head.
That said, if his member was as big as the rest of him, that
might not be possible, not because I’d have to concentrate, but because I’d want
to.
“I make you mine, officially,” he continued, “no one ever
has you again, Lottie, but me.”
Chills slid over my skin at the same time my eyes got hot.
I never would have thought it, but what he said was way
better than any orgasm in the history of time.
And that answered my earlier question.
What I said was not too soon.
“Are you understanding me?” he asked.
“Yes, Mo,” I whispered.
I’d be his.
I’d be his to love (hopefully), treasure (hopefully)…
And protect.
No one else’s.
Ever again.
But he was starting now.
“Now go to sleep, sweetheart,” he said, all soft.
I loved it when he let himself call me “baby.” It didn’t
happen often, in fact, not since our Come to Jesus.
That was my first “sweetheart.”
I’d never forget it.
Not ever.
I settled back into bed, pulling the covers over me.
I didn’t watch but I did hear soft noises from the cushions
as he settled back to the couch.
It took a while before I said into the dark, “I hope it’s
one of the guys from tonight.”
“Me too, baby. Now please, go to sleep.”
It was the please that got me.
I closed my eyes.
And with Mo watching over me, keeping me safe, I drifted
off.
And slept like a baby.