“Can Tommy show at, say, four?” she requested.
“Tommy’s a forty-three-year-old, never-married, single guy who took a single’s cruise last Christmas, and by his report, nailed four broads during this cruise. Do you think a man like that is gettin’ up at three-thirty in the morning to drag a ballet barre across town and install it in his friend’s basement?”
“It’s Christmas, so yes,” she sniffed.
“I wouldn’t get your hopes up on that, gum drop,” he warned.
“I wouldn’t call women broads again, Hixon,” she returned. “I’d take you to task for that but I’m in a Christmas mood.”
Hix could say for definite he hadn’t missed her Christmas mood.
“I didn’t think bitches was the way to go,” he teased, and she assumed a severe expression.
“You were right,” she shared.
“Or pieces of ass,” he went on.
“You’re right about that too.”
“Or asses he tapped,” he kept at her.
“Hix . . . the barre,” she pushed.
“He’ll get here when he gets here, but he said early and the man owns a farm. His early will be early.”
“If it isn’t early-early, she’ll hear the drill, Hix.”
“You can’t muffle a drill, Greta.”
Suddenly, she threw up her hand with the pen, her other hand with the pad, and declared loudly, “There has to be a big Christmas surprise! Corinne only wanted clothes, hair stuff and makeup, nothing big enough to make a huge to-do over, except her new phone, which we agreed with Hope that she could give her. Shaw wanted videogames and money, so ditto with the to-do. Andy never gives a crap what anyone gives him because he’s too excited for them to open what he got them. Your Christmas surprise is gonna be a Boxing Day surprise after the kids and Andy are gone because I don’t think I’ll be able to be quiet after you do what you do to me when you see me in it. Mamie’s barre is our only surprise!”
Hix wasn’t feeling amused anymore.
“Let’s go back to my Boxing Day surprise,” he suggested in a growl.
He had no clue what Boxing Day even was.
He still wanted to know about his surprise.
She looked smug, a look he felt tighten in his crotch.
She also sounded smug when she announced, “We’ll just say Santa has a variety of little helpers and you’re gonna be glad one of them is sleeping in your bedroom.”
“Sneak peek now,” he decreed.
She shook her head. “We have to go get Andy.”
“He can wait an hour . . . or two.”
“He always comes to me Christmas Eve’s Eve, Hix. Homemade pizza and viewings of Lethal Weapon to start the festivities. It’s tradition. And it’s getting late. So if we’re missing something, we have to drop by the store on the way home with Andy.”
“Babe—”
She interrupted him. “We need to make sure we have everything. The Christmas feeding orgy starts tonight and I’m not going to the grocery store if we’re missing something after we get home and you aren’t either.”
And thank Christ for that since she’d sent him on four runs the last three days to prepare.
He opened his mouth to say something, whatever that had to be to get him a sneak peek of whatever his present was going to be, when the doorbell rang.
He got off the stool, ordering, “I’ll get that. You get your ass upstairs and get in my surprise.”
She shook her head. “Not gonna happen, darlin’.”
So it was lingerie.
Please, Christ, make it a teddy.
She had three teddies. He’d seen them all. He liked them all. Enough he wanted another one.
He stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. “Thirty minutes.”
“Oh no,” she said softly, her eyes flaring. “That would be an impossibility.”
Fuck.
She smiled a wicked smile. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”
The doorbell rang again.
So Hix muttered, “You knew exactly what you were doin’.” And he heard her equally wicked chuckle as he stalked to the door.
The lead glass panes in the door obscured who was behind it except for the fact whoever it was had big hair.
Hix didn’t have a good feeling about that.
His feeling was correct when he opened the door and saw Tawnee Dare standing on his porch.
She didn’t waste any time.
“I wanna see my daughter.”
Shit, he had her, they hadn’t yet served her, and he didn’t have the papers.
All his deputies had volunteered to find her in order to serve her but it was Donna who won that job in an epic scissors-paper-rock battle that took fifteen minutes.
This meant Donna had the papers.
Shit.
Before he could think of what to say, she kept speaking.
“I know she probably doesn’t wanna see me but it’s Christmas and I wanna see my boy.”
Probably?
“We’re not doin’ this,” he told her, beginning to close the door at the same time scanning his street, his hand going to his back pocket to get his phone.
“No!” she shouted, and his eyes sliced back to her as she opened the storm, stepped in it and put a hand up to press on his door.
“Stand back, Ms. Dare,” he warned.
“I get it. She’s done with me. But I wanna see my boy.”
“Take your hand off my door, Ms. Dare, and remove yourself from my property.”
“I got him a present. It’s in the car. I wanna see him. I wanna give it to him.”
“Do you honestly think she gives one shit what you want?” he asked and went on, “And trust me, your boy wants nothing from you either. Since birth, Greta’s given him everything he’s needed, you didn’t damage his brain so much he doesn’t understands that, so he won’t give a shit he gets anything from you now.”
He couldn’t credit the wince his words got him, but before she could say anything or he could push the door closed, her eyes went over his shoulder.
“Greta. Greta, girl, I’m not here to cause problems,” she said quickly. “I just wanna see Andy.”
“Greta, move outta sight,” Hix demanded. “Call Donna, tell her Ms. Dare is here and tell her, she leaves before Donna gets here, the woman is driving a late model, blue Honda Accord. Colorado plates. Plates that are expired.”
Tawnee’s eyes shot to him. “What’re you talkin’ about?”
He didn’t answer her.
He ordered, “Step back, Ms. Dare.”
“Okay, just let me give you his present and I . . . I . . .” Her eyes went over his shoulder again. “I got something for you too, girl.”
“I’ll say it once more, step back,” Hix clipped.
Greta obviously wasn’t doing as he asked because Tawnee kept her attention over his shoulder and something came over her face. Something strange. Impossible to achieve. Pugilistic but defeated. Entreating yet stubborn. Sad but hopeful.
“I know you’re done,” she said quietly, all those things in her tone too. “You haven’t unblocked me, they haven’t put me back on the visitor list. But I got nothin’, Greta. Kavanagh ousted me. Got nothin’ and it’s Christmas. Not askin’ for much. Just to give you and Andy a little somethin’.” She tried an unpracticed smile. “And you love Christmas. Always did.”