It wasn’t his right. Not anymore. He knew it. So did I.
And even though I’d moved on to something beautiful, that didn’t mean I didn’t feel, right then, like I’d lost him all over again.
He dropped his hand, shoved through the storm door, strolled across my porch, down my steps, right to his slate-gray Range Rover parked at the curb, his tall, striking body at his command, even if there was a stiffness to the loose agility he usually always carried himself with.
The storm whooshed closed as I stood in the open door and watched him round the hood of his truck, the lights flashing as he unlocked it.
I continued standing there as he folded in, started up the truck, the headlights illuminated the street and then he drove away.
I felt an arm wrap around my chest, another one around my belly, and the hard heat of Hix pressed into my back.
The tears just kept coming and I didn’t pull my eyes away from the now-empty, dark, peaceful street.
“Come away from the door,” Hix murmured into my hair.
I stayed where I was, silently weeping.
He put slight pressure on, not too much, but stopped when I refused to move.
“Baby, come inside,” he urged.
“What makes her this way?” I asked the sleepy street.
Hix settled in behind me and answered, “I don’t know.”
“Does she enjoy knowing that she causes this pain?”
“I wish I had answers for you, but I just don’t, sweetheart.”
“Now she’s destroyed one young man’s life and two marriages. That young man her son, one of those marriages her daughter’s. How can she even sleep?”
“Don’t know,” he whispered.
“I hate her,” I whispered back.
His arms gave me a squeeze. “I know.”
“I hate her, Hix,” I decreed, my voice breaking.
“I know, baby,” he said, and forced me to turn into his arms, but he didn’t move us from the door as he held me close and I sobbed into his sky-blue shirt, standing at the front door to the house that the man I’d just lost forever in a way I never thought I’d lose him had bought for me.
It took time but I pulled myself together, pulled an arm from around him and shoved it up between us to wipe my face.
Only then did I tip my head back to look up to him.
“He’ll email me those pictures,” I told him.
He nodded. “I know.”
“Do you think we can still make our reservation?”
He put a hand to my face and it was Hix’s thumb that drew away the wet still there, one side, then the other, as he answered, “Think I should get you a gin and tonic and we should order a pizza.”
I shook my head. “I’ll fix my makeup and I wanna go.”
“Greta—”
It came out suddenly harsh when I stated, “She won’t beat me.”
Hix’s thumb stilled on the apple of my cheek and he stared into my eyes.
“So I have puffy eyes and it’ll take until glass of wine number three for me to wash away a little bit of what just happened so I can maybe taste my steak, but I had romantic dinner date plans with my man and we’re gonna keep those plans. We’re gonna spend too much on dinner. I’m gonna get tipsy. And then we’re gonna come home and I’m gonna fuck your brains out. And she can go fuck herself, living in her nasty world doing nasty shit to people she should treat with respect and love and . . .” I lost the urge to rail on about a woman who didn’t deserve my time or my anger, so I finished, “Fuck her. Just fuck her. I want steak.”
I didn’t want steak. I was pretty sure if I ate steak, I’d throw up.
But damn it, I was going to take this licking and keep on ticking, and Tawnee Dare could go jump in a lake.
“That’s what you want, I’ll call the restaurant and tell them we’re gonna be a little late. It’s Tuesday in McCook County before Thanksgiving and they’re a restaurant where you can’t get out without payin’ at least fifty bucks a plate. They won’t give our table to someone else.”
“Good,” I bit off.
He grinned a small, careful grin, dipped in and touched his mouth to mine.
When he pulled back he murmured, “Go fix your face so we can head out. I’ll make the call while you’re doin’ that.”
I nodded, got on my toes, brushed my lips to his and when I was rolling back, he let me go.
I rounded him and headed to the stairs only to stop with my foot on the first step when he called my name.
“Yes?” I asked, looking back at him.
“Really like that dress, baby.”
That bought him a small, not-careful grin before I took my time and maybe swayed my hips more than normal as I walked up the stairs to go fix my face in order to go out and have a romantic date with my man, county sheriff, father of three, excellent lover, all-around good guy, Hixon Drake.
One thing Keith had been right about, as heartbreaking and terrible as he’d meant it to be when he’d said it, it made it no less true.
Landing Hixon Drake was a job well done.
And I could live with that.
Easily.
Hollow
Hixon
SHE DIDN’T TAKE her eyes from him, not from the moment Elvan touched his fingers to the keys, not a second as the room suspended, the others melted away, and her lips sang Pink’s “Glitter in the Air” straight at him.
He’d been wrong. Gum drop wasn’t it.
He should have been calling her sugar.
Because he thought it could never get better than that first night.
But every one since, she’d made better and better.
And in that moment, sitting at a table with an empty chair across from him, her sparkling water there waiting for her to return, Hix knew the ride he was taking to fall in love was over.
At the same time it never was and never would be.
That was what love was, he knew right then.
An endless night of beauty that didn’t include making plans to retire to your RV.
Just sitting back and seeing what came next in your never-ending journey of discovery.
He was in love with Greta Kate Dare.
It was too bad he couldn’t afford to buy her a twenty-five thousand dollar engagement ring.
But he’d get her one on their twentieth anniversary.
Hix walked in through the kitchen door of Greta’s house to see Shaw and Wendy at her island hunched over the books and papers spread all over it, studying. Corinne was nowhere to be seen (probably in the living room on the phone with her new boyfriend, a recent development that didn’t make Hix happy). And Mamie and Greta were bending over pots at the stove.